Cambridge University
Orienteering Club

Icenian 2008

=String Course Results

=Icenian Trophy Results

First - WAOC - 00:45:22

Second - SOS - 01:14:58

We are hoping to award the trophy at the Dumpling/Punch weekend on 16-17th Feb

=Organiser's Comments

Organisation for this year Icenian kicked off well ahead of time and permissions were obtained by the end of August. However the lack of a controller delayed the registration of the race. Fortunately for us Mark Collis (DRONGO) accepted to take up the place and by late November the race was fully registered with BOF. My apologies for the confusion that the voice "limited" EOD caused – I was unnecessarily too concerned about running out of maps for some courses.

Ben and Chris quickly finalised the courses and the map, while Graeme was of great help in all logistical aspects, from gathering the SI kit to collecting all the WAOC equipment before and after the race. A special mention goes to Anya for driving the minibus to the race and to Clare for pushing it out of its parking spot first thing in the morning (apparently there were some problems in shifting gear into reverse...)

A bright day welcomed just over 200 competitors, who really enjoyed the challenging courses set out by Ben, with some saying that they were the best courses they have ever run in Thetford Forest. After a little hectic start of the day, everything ran quite smoothly thanks to all those who helped out with all the different tasks. A big thanks goes to Bruce Marshall (WAOC) for helping to enter the competitors in the database. Registration managed to endure until the end, notwithstanding the wind which blew it up twice!

Overall it has been a successful race – although with its own "moments". In particular the results have proven to be difficult to finalise due to the incompatibility of the old database format with the latest OE version. Fortunately, Tony Biggs (HAVOC) came to our help and produced for us suitable sets of results. Eventually, times for all clubs could be added up and it resulted that the winner of the Icenian Trophy for this year is WAOC.

Roberto Zanchi

=Planner's Comments

Overall, I think the race went quite well, with no major problems on the day. I confined myself to the west of Bromehill as the eastern half mainly consists of featureless white forest with bracken interspersed with brambles, and the western half has some interesting depressions and little vegetation under foot. This led to some quite fast times, especially on the blue and brown courses, but making them longer would have meant adding more long path legs. The planning was not without its difficulties, as the forestry commission felled an area of forest in the centre of the map over Christmas, which meant replanning the junior courses, and I’m grateful to the controller, Mark Collis, for his help with this. Another difficulty was the motorcycle tracks – I’d decided before Christmas to remove the old tracks from the map as they were indistinct, but then the forestry commission made a whole lot more. These would have taken too long to map which is why they weren’t marked. I hope most people enjoyed the courses, and I think only using the western half of the area turned out quite well (with the added bonus that everyone got 1:10000 A4 maps).

Ben Stevens

=Controller's Comments

Controlling the Icenian was quite a strange experience for me, given the number I had previously organised and planned when I was a member of CUOC myself. I thought that Ben's courses made excellent use of the forest, in particular the strip littered with depressions alongside the road to the west which gets ever more runnable as the years go by. They also avoided the worst of the brambles, which made not only for happy competitors but for some fast times.

The most interesting comment I received on the day was that the Orange course was too hard: not so much because it was harder than TD3 but because it was considerably harder than at another recent race. It would be interesting to know whether other regular Orange course runners (and their parents) had the same feeling, in particular because the course that you ran was the result of my encouragement of Ben to make it harder than the original draft!

Well done to CUOC for putting on a successful race with their limited resources, and I hope that you all enjoyed your runs on a lovely sunny winter's day.

Mark Collis (DRONGO)