Planning the chasing sprint on Sherwood Pines was, well, a challenge: it is certainly the worst area we've used. The area is full of tracks, there's no technical detail and the white is full of brambles. Still, competitor expectations were low and I thought I could spring a few surprises. Here's the thinking behind the men's course.
The basic plan was to mix up areas of low visibility with route choice, while keeping the sites themselves easy and visible. Then rely on people assuming it would be very easy rather than just easy and screwing up.
The one area where detailed mapreading is needed is among the trenches in the west, and the only way to use it was to start the courses into the dark green (runnable with near-zero visibility). It also meant a bit of bramble. I was nervous about this, but the area was mapped when the forest was open, and so was reasonably accurate, and I kept the flags above ground level. Even so, there were a few casualties. Control 2 required staying on line out of 1, the thinking here being that some folk would just run out of the green and struggle to relocate in the ditchy area. Next up, a through-or-round leg to 3 then a one-off chance to look at some contours at 4. Again here the woods were brambly, and an early decision to go left through mountain bike track and ride was best. The next bit was nicer, with short sections through low-visibility trees to try to knock you off line, and scope for route choice to avoid the green. Finally, a frantic compass-bearing section through fast but low-visibility plantation. Given the limitations of the area, I felt the prologue tested a variety of skills, and a lot of errors being made by everyone and on most of the legs. Certainly the pre-race moans of "it's all track running" and "it's just a cross country race" were absent, and winners Matt Crane and Laura Daniel ended up almost a minute clear, enough to start the chase out of sight.
I opted for a different style of planning for the chase, more biased towards route choice with easy-to-find control sites that people could race at aggressively. The herd mentality was certainly prominent. Remarkably, on leg 1, nobody took the fastest route (left) and over a hundred people had legged it round the path before anyone collected the few second offered by the corner cutting option. Men's leg 2 was even more remarkable. Everyone I saw left the picnic field at 90 degrees to the straight line before turning sharp left up the ride into the green. Mats Troeng seemed to be heading across the field to the (fastest) straighter route, but after 3-4 strides he swung back to rejoin the pack. On the outer loop path options were available, but straight was usually faster, 9-10 being the exception where the trick was to hit the path end out of 9. The denouement involved a km route-choice leg (straightish, hitting path ends being best) and a sprint round the field, which sadly for the spectators nobody seemed to mess up. Both leaders got caught midway round, Claire Ward pulling steadily away in the women's race and Allan Bogle producing a flyingly fast final km to take the men's race. Further back, Pippa Whitehouse was fastest lady, just inside 6mins/km and Mats Troeng fastest man, running away from a pack of 20 or so at just inside 4.5mins/km.
Graeme Ackland
Thank you to all the competitors for coming along and making this such an exciting race. I am sorry we had to put a limit on entries in the Men's Open, but the nature of the Chasing Sprint is such that the first start block can only be a certain size. The limit wasn't reached by the closing date, by the way, so getting your entry in on time would seem to be a good way of ensuring you get a run! In the end we accepted all entries, but the latest entrants went off after 12pm and hence were rushed to finish before the courses closed for the first race, and also didn't get much of a rest between races. Incidentally, this is why the seeded block was in the centre of the start block rather than at the end, as the large number of late entrants would have made the seeded starts too late.
The number of competitors and the constraints of the area also meant that it was a struggle to get everyone back and downloaded from the first race in time to get the start list generated, hence we had to put the second race back by 10 minutes. I hope this didn't cause any problems to anyone.
Many, many thanks to my team of helpers, who made sure that I had nothing to do on the day but spectate and ensure everyone had a supply of chocolate! In particular, thanks must go to Graeme for planning, Jon Marsden and David Currie for all the technical support, Tony Buckland for controlling, and SLOW for equipment, along with the NOC team of Garry Drew and Keith Streb for sharing their event with us.
Hope to see you all at the Chasing Sprint next year!
Caroline Catmur
The following property was found after the event; contact Caroline (after 13th March because I'm away until then; caroline@catmur.co.uk 07971 661271) to arrange collection:
| 3 Sep 07 | Another new baby! |
| 25 Aug 07 | Oliver Murphy |
| 25 Aug 07 | Nick's Sprint Tips |
