Orienteering Planner of the Year

[harry]

Yes tonight i am a sad geeky fool still in the office trying to write a paper of a friday evening. Time for a fruitTea-break so i thought i'd try to start a new discussion...

Last year around this time the squad were asked to vote for the top UK Cup race of the year and the winner JK Day 2 Long distance planner was invited to the Inaugral to claim his prize. Shamefully I can't remember who the planner was now but well done to him, I voted for his race too.

In a year when there has been much sniping on nopesport about bad planning i thought it might be nice to name and congratulate the great planners of the year. It doesn't have to be a UK Cup just a really well planned course you enjoyed.

So I will start the "2005 Planning Hall of Fame" by congratulating Bob Daly, I very much enjoyed his W21L course at SOL3 at Achlean. A little bit of route choice early on and a speedy control pick section at the end with lots of changes of direction, you had to really stay in control but could run faster and faster due to the great runnability.

Niiice.

[RJ]

The winner of the elite planner of the year for 2004 was John Duckworth for his JK Day 2 course.

[bedders]

Ive had a little scout for the name of the planner of day 6 at the Scottish but sadly to no avail. The M18A course was the single most enjoyable course I have ever done, superb longer legs with intricate navigation into controls and great little areas of control picking.

I know that this is one of the best areas in the country but the planner could have planned any old course on it and this way certainly worked in my eyes!

[Paul Frost]

The planners for day 6 were Dave Coustick & Lynne Walker. I think Dave did the M18A course.

[gross2006]

Yep... Dave Coustick & lynne Walker for Day 6..... as planners....

[bedders]

Well I nominate Dave Coustick as planner of the year then

[Dave Coustick]

Thanks for your comments - it was certainly a great area to plan on. And for those who did not spot it earlier I have posted some photos of Glen Dye action on http://www.coustick.co.uk

[awk]

Interesting this one: there's almost two levels to this.

First of all there is the planner or planning team who have collectively produced the best set of courses at an event. Then there is the best individual course.

I say this because there are events above where we (the awk family) ran different courses to those nominated and had somewhat different experiences. Equally I'm going to mention events where the courses we ran were great, but others reporting here had different experiences.

So - best 'standard' course I've run this year was Day 1 at Scottish 6-day, at Cambus O'May (Rob Bloor planner?). Most enjoyable course nomination from the M14 in our family is jointly the British Champs at Penhale and JM5M at White Rose Day 2.

I'd also make very special mention of the Battersea Park race and Medium distance race at Mytchett during World Cup week public races - two of the most enjoyable events of the year for me, and both very well planned. In fact, my event of the year so far was Battersea.

[bendover]

british middle distance champs at sandhurst was amazing.

cannae remember who planned it. dave and jenny peel?

ben

[graeme]

These best planning awards always tend to end up being "who had the best area to plan on". Trying to get away from this, from the small sample of events I've been at, I would nominate... six day 2 at
Scolty.

I'd been there before a couple of times, and it was unpleasant. Most people reckoned it would be the worst day, and it certainly wasn't. When I finished, I felt the planning was amazing. Later I felt some of the credit should go to the mapper (Jon Musgrave) - the new map was a huge improvement on the previous one - and actually the forest had got nicer. Bogendriep runs it close - previous efforts there have been marred by bingo controls on low visibility non-features: the 6-day had none of that.

Other generally well planned courses, strangely - Bob Daly at Achlean and JK day 1, if you ignore the fact that both had misplaced controls...

Disagree about Glen Dye though. It is by far the best area used at the six day, and any course there will be very enjoyable, but I've run much better courses there (including one by GRoss) - M35 was just control picking along the red line. Sorry Dave.

Best UK cup planning/controlling - sprint at Bloom Wood. Again, not the best area and not the most enjoyable course, but great planning is making the most of what you have, and this course got the very best from the area. If the controls had been hung a bit lower it would have been a real lottery. It wasn't - which sadly meant Rob Baker was able to run away from me

Graeme

[Becks]

Again I'm really sorry but have no idea who actually planned this course, but my favourite this year was the Sprint Qually at the World Cup on the guildford Uni Campus - yes it was a great area, but there was loads of route choice, tricky decisions and it was pretty physical to boot. No one in GB has too much experience planning on these kind of areas and it was a great course.

[Paulo]

Have to agree that that the sprint courses at the World Cup at both Guildford and Battersea were both excellent, making very good use of the areas offering plenty of tricky route choice and requiring constant conentration - it was suprising how many World Cup runners lost time, particularly at Guildford.

Both events were planned by Andy Jones of SLOW (both the World Cup courses & all the public races), so well done to him.

[mharky]

Bloom Wood was brilliant, Tim Booth planned a great course, especially 2-3, fantastic.

The World Cup qualifiers at Guildford Univeristy were also really good, very enjoyable and the course captured what sprint orienteering should be like.

[HOCOLITE]

I found my course at Hambledon this year very well planned. No idea as to who the planner was, but it was very fair and moderated the climb W45S.

[Guest]

I thought the World Cup courses were all excellent. I think my fav was the Guildford Campus Sprint race.