Sunday 13th September 2009
Black Country Championships 2009
Comments
Sprint - Himley Hall
Controller's Comments
Richard Dearden (HOC)
Planner's Comments
Adrian Bailey (HOC)
Medium - Baggeridge Country Park
Controller's Comments
Alison Sloman (HOC)
Planner's Comments
Paul Basher (HOC)
Organiser's Comments
When the club scheduled a C5 event at Baggeridge I suggested that we try something different: a two-race event with a short race in Himley Park beforehand. Thanks to the committee for supporting the idea, and thanks to Paul Basher for doing such a good job as planner on Baggeridge. He was exceedingly well organised and I recommend his services for future events!
Organising and planning the event without a controller was problematic for both of us, so it was great when Alison Sloman, who'd already done an excellent job on the mapping, stepped in to check all the controls, and help put out the courses on Baggeridge. Thanks also to Richard Dearden, who controlled Himley on the day and made my job doable.
The event at Himley was improvised to some extent: it wasn't a sprint map as such, hence the unmapped wall on course 1, and the terrain was better suited to studded shoes, but the comments were favourable and people seemed to find the courses suitably challenging. There were questions raised about control 42 – copse, southern part – which several people had trouble finding, even when they had read the control description! It was later confirmed that the control was in the right place on the right feature, so the mystery remains.
Thanks to the authorities at Himley and Baggeridge for supporting the event. Congratulations to Ian Hopkins, the overall Black Country winner, and Jason Howell and Liz Phillips, the overall Open winners. Runners-up were Barry Houghton, James Howell and Holly Stodgell. The presentations will be at a later date, and a list of category winners is provided separately.
It turned out that a lot of people weren't available on the day, so thanks very much to everyone who helped. Although some people didn't want to run two races on the same day, there was always the option of just running in one of them, so I'm unsure why more people didn't take part – I'd be interested to hear from you if you chose not to come.
Adrian Bailey (HOC)