Valentines Park (Local)
Results | Routegadget | Report
Organiser, Harold Wyber
It was great to have CHIG back hosting an event in the ever-popular London Park Race series and I hope everyone had an enjoyable run. It was definitely pleasing to hear a good amount of positive feedback in the aftermath, despite the admitted shortcomings in the map (apologies again for having not managed to get the map updated, and also for having been previously unaware of and unable to plan for the funfair set-up!).
Valentines Park is certainly a faster and arguably less complex and physically challenging area than other recent venues in this year’s series. However, as many of us will know from painful / frustrating experiences at sprint races, being able to run faster in an area also means you can make mistakes faster, and these can be more costly. While I sought to engender some route choice options for the legs in the northern part of the map, I tried to go for more of a pinball series of controls in the final third of the course north of the lake, with short legs and repeated changes in direction. This seems to have caught a few people out, with three people missing control 23 on the Long course, perhaps proving a good test of how people’s concentration and focus held up in the latter stages.
I am very grateful to Redbridge Council for granting us permission to hold the event, and I would also like to offer my thanks to the volunteers from CHIG without whom this event could not have taken place: Ray Weekes, Iain Ambler, Adam Dent, Paul Corney, Kostya Lutsenko, Tim Wright and Thomas Elgood. Many thanks too to Keith and Luke Bennett of DFOK, who very kindly helped with setting controls out.
