The limitations of planning a Middle race at Hafod.

With only 3 river bridges and limited 'usable forest' this placed constraints on the courses. I looked at alternatives for the start locations all of which would have made the climb ratio significantly over 5%. Some areas of the map had a very high density of control sites. As a result I made two conscious decisions. Firstly all the courses needed to flow in roughly the same direction, and secondly the loading of controls was balanced to prevent (with a couple of exceptions) no more than a third of the competitors visiting any site. These decisions may have resulted in some legs not being as technical as they should have been. On reflection course 12 seems to have drawn the short straw in this respect.

I would ideally have liked 17 to19 to have more of a technical challenge, but it was not possible to get courses of the correct length starting from the red start. I was pleased however that virtually all of the senior long course winning times came in within the 30 to 35 minute winning times required for a Middle race.

Finally I would like to comment on the specific issues I was made aware of.

Control 145 (courses 1,2 and 3). After a query this was looked at in detail. The control flag was situated on a 1.5m crag at the correct location on the map west of the clearing and east of the veg boundary. However there was a unmapped 3m crag approximately 30m SW of the control site used and this had been taped by me. This was on the west side of the vegetation boundary. The original map which used to plan initially did not have either the veg boundary or the clearing and this was missed on the recheck when the revised map was available.

Path bend north east of 112, east of 128 (courses 8, 12 and 14). The path bend is not a distinct as is shown on the map. I understand that as a result some people were therefore using the path bend to the west as an attack point hence losing time.

Control 245 (courses 2 and 12). The control was visible from a reasonable distance when put out. Unfortunately it was not vertical for later competitors. As the vegetation had increased substantially in the last month since the control was checked, this meant that it was now difficult to see it, under these circumstances.

Smiley on yellow course. A white smiley was inandvertently put out on the yellow course.
Apologies to any competiors who were inconveniences by any of the above issues. I hope despite that you all enjoyed your courses.

Finally, finally thanks to John Mills, the Dallimores and Jeremy Parr for collecting controls, and to Roger Stein for all his advice over the last 9 months as well as collecting controls.

Finally, finally, finally sincere thanks to the 1900 of you who came along on a gloriously sunny day in July to make all the effort worthwhile.

Pete Ribbans (SWOC)