Claife Heights Compass Sport Cup and Trophy event, 17th February 2013 – Assessment – Dan and Karen Parker

We received 11 emails from 9 different people and also spoke to a number of people at the event and a few days later. The comments below reflect these opinions plus our own experiences of the event.

Overall Summary: It was a very good and enjoyable event.

Pre-Event Details: These were thorough, and provided all the information required. It was good to have a detailed map showing the layout of parking, assembly and start/finish which left no ambiguity regarding timings etc. Having the old map on the web site was also appreciated – possibly something that should happen more often. Some people thought that the details were too verbose, which risked the most important facts being missed. We also thought this prior to the event, but having reviewed the details again we think that there is little superfluous information. Perhaps the font size could have been reduced to allow for quicker scanning through the (fewer) pages and would also have reduced paper use for those who printed them out.

Car Parking/Assembly: Excellent (large) road signs to get to the event. Well organised parking with clear instructions given. The good assembly area offset the negatives of linear parking for an inter-club event like this. The variable parking charges divided opinion, with the strongest views being from those against. One alternative suggestion was for full cars to be free and everyone else £2, which might be a bit fairer. Also maybe 4 people, rather than 5, should count as full since economical, environmentally friendly super-minis don’t take 5.

Courses: There were a number of comments about the area used – “rough”, “not the best Lake District area” etc. People also wondered why more use wasn’t made of the white forest. However overall the courses were very much approved of given the constraints on the parts of the area that could be used, and certainly the Blue courses that we ran provided a suitable challenge. A couple of people commented that the early controls (start through to 5) on Men’s Green were a bit easy. There were also comments from later starters that some marshy control sites were in a serious state of disrepair with the SI box trampled into the mud. We had late starts and also noticed this (controls 151 and 104). We are both great fans of having the SI boxes on the ground as it makes putting them out and getting them in so much easier. 99% of the time it doesn’t cause a problem, but maybe specific, vulnerable, sites could use an alternative layout.

Control 128: Quite a number of people were affected by the siting of this control (some quite seriously). We both visited this control and though neither of us lost any time here due to our direction of approach, we were both surprised to find it where we did, seemingly adjacent to rather than at the foot of a crag, and much higher than expected. Unfortunately it was people who took the safest route into the control that were most likely to lose time. Without re-visiting the site we can’t make a truly objective assessment and don’t want to comment without knowing all of the facts, but, given the problems, the site should probably not have been used in the first place. We also feel that the comments in the results, while correct, were too bland and perhaps some form of explanation or apology should have been given. We believe the correct decision was made (ie. no action) as any alternative would be worse; voiding the three affected courses would probably have required the CSC/T to be re-run while removing the control from the results just adds different unfairness.

Dan and Karen Parker