Organiser's comments

It was great to see so many people turning out to run on Eston Moor, although the significant number of people who put their entries in after we'd had to order the maps did mean that we hit some limits on our event organisation.

I hope you enjoyed tackling Dave Riches' courses.  The trees on the moor have definitely thickened up a bit as the years have passed and that, together with the heather and gorse, made for quite a physical challenge.  I was certainly glad to get back to my car for a bit of a rest after my run.

Many thanks to all the volunteers who made the event possible, and for your resilience in dealing with a number of issues that definitely aren't featured in our Organiser's Handbook!  It was great to see the excellent team spirit and positive approach to problem-solving.  If you're interested, the 'unusual' problems included:-

The toilet being nowhere to be seen when the organising team arrived to get things ready for the event.  After searching the parking areas – and the Flatts Lane Country Park car park across the road – we finally found the toilet.  It was 'not quite where specified' ........ and had blown over!  Four of us managed to get it upright and slightly closer to the car park, but it was still a bit of a 'remote facility'.
• A control going missing.  Fortunately, our Controller has keen eyesight and spotted where someone had tossed it high up into a tree.  (Why do people do that sort of thing?)
• The Start flag going missing for a short period when we were setting up the Start.
• A lack of White course maps.  After a lot of searching and checking, we finally found that the plastic bag marked White also had Very Short Green on the other side, and it had ended up the wrong way up.  A learning point about not double-labelling map bags, I think.  I hope the young competitors who 'ran up' to the Yellow, Orange and Light Green courses coped with the extra distance and enjoyed their runs – from the results, it looks as if they managed fine – and apologies to the competitor who decided that running up wasn't for him and and went back down.

At least the weather was kind to us, and we had good mobile phone coverage!

Anyway, thanks to:-

• Dave Riches for planning the courses.
• Charles Mayes for controlling.  Charles is also going to capture some learning points for us.
• Neil Hunter on the computer system.
• Ozzy Gardner for looking after the Start, and Martin & Lisa Weatherill for bringing the Start equipment back down off the moor.
• David & Viv Murphy for helping Dave and Charles to bring in the controls.
• Chris Mackenzie and Neil Hunter for putting all the Organiser's kit back into my car while I was still recovering from my rather epic expedition round the Green course.

Caroline Mackenzie
Organiser