Ilkley Moor Badge
9th March 2003

Comments from Officials

Planners
Steve Watkins and Martyn Broadest

By Steve Watkins:

The best piece of advice I was given during the planning for Ilkley was: 'make sure courses 4 and 5 are good - keep the old duffers happy and you'll be alright!' Luckily for me, these courses seemed to be the most popular. Course 3 was about 1 km longer than the guidelines; hopefully people didn't find it too physical. A few people mentioned they had had trouble locating the controls on the slope below the westernmost wood (second controls on the longer courses) - I think the wet weather before the event had made the stream and marsh features more prominent. Looking at split times, most runners were consistent on these legs.

I tried to keep people out of the really ankle-twisting terrain below Rocky Valley, and to make sure that they weren't running into the weather on the exposed upper moor. This seemed to work, there were few retirements, and I heard quite a few comments from people who enjoyed the running the high legs with the wind behind them.

The planning for this event involved a certain amount of nervousness for me, as it was my first attempt at planning anything larger than a summer evening informal. Martyn was exceedingly helpful and informative as joint planner. His advice, and that of John as controller was invaluable. There were lots of things to think about - would people enjoy my courses, were they too easy or too long, were there any mistakes, would the maps come back from the printers ok? On the day though, I was pleasantly surprised - all the comments were positive and constructive. With many people saying 'thank you' for an enjoyable run, it made all the hours of planning worthwhile.

As well as actually planning courses 1 to 7, I also had the task of learning the planning and mapping software sufficiently to plot the courses and produce the different sized maps. Once I had got the hang of it, the software was easy enough to use, but there didn't seem to be much time to get everything ready for the printers a week before the event. I had to quickly chop up Tony Thornley's fine map of the moor to produce the two sizes and accommodate the course descriptions - sorry Tony! There were a couple of effects from the on-line entry system. The percentage of pre-entries was much higher then usual (65% rather than 40%), so we ended up printing too many maps. It also reduced the time available to get the maps printed and bagged - the pre-entry didn't close till the Monday before the event, so the printer's didn't get final numbers until Tuesday and the maps came back on Friday, leaving only a day to bag them up.

Finally, a big thank you to all the people who helped me out - Martyn and John, and Alex for helping to seal 650 bags and for living with a house full of maps for several weeks.

Steve Watkins

By Martyn Broadest:

In reccying this event I had the pleasure of spending time up on Ilkley Moor
in some of the most spectacular weather I can remember. A 360o panorama as
far as the horizon on a crisp clear winter's day. Marvellous. I also spent
time up there in some of the grimmest weather I can remember too!

Fortunately, the rain held off during the event and by the very positive
comments we received at the end, everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. My
co-planner Steve did a terrific job planning his first badge event and
shouldered most of the burden of the event, planning the adult courses and
doing the O-cad and Picover computing for all the courses single-handed. We
consciously tried to avoid making you run up and down the slopes, instead
aiming to traverse the courses, and give route choice wherever we could. I
hope we succeeded. Thanks to John, who was absolutely sound with his
down-to-earth and straightforward advice. With my Aire Chair's hat on,
thanks to all the helpers and particularly Neil for doing such a thorough

Martyn Broadest

Controller
John Golton (EBOR)

On February 15th I came to check the control sites - what a glorious day. Just perfect to be on the moor. Not like Saturday March 8th when it rained so hard. Thankfully the winter had taken out most of the braken so running, although physical, was possible in the beautiful weather.

I felt the two planners, Steven and Martyn, had done a good job. This, I understand, was Steven's first attempt at planning so your comments would be helpful to him.

I also wish to thankall the helpers who made the event run so smoothly.

Organiser
Neil Stevens

I many ways the Grammar Shool was a comfortable and easy event centre compared to a tent on a forest track. But there is always something to creep up behind you and give you a nasty fright. The ladies loos flooded and threatened to wash us away in a tide of ... But quick action by the caretaker averted disaster.

Thanks to all the helpers who made the event run smoothly, the planners who gave everyone a good run for their money and the person who made the sun shine after such a terrible Saturday.

Thank you to Mike Cox who ran the pre-entries and Dave Walton who looked after the computing.. The club used MDOC's on-line system for the first time and we were pleased to see that over half of entrants made use of it.