KNC 16 - Epsom Downs (MV)Thu 6 Feb

Epsom Downs Racecourse Grandstand
Epsom Downs Racecourse Grandstand

Kent Night Cup

Local level event

Explanation of event levels

Local events are usually low key and in the 'localised' area, ideal for newcomers to try the sport and Training events are non competitive and used for training and coaching, aimed at members of the club, but they can attract people from neighbouring clubs, and are often ideal for newcomers to try the sport. Regional events attract participants from around the local Region, National events are high quality competitions that will attract people from far away, Major events are Major Events such as a British Championships. Virtual events are where there are no physical controls being used. Your presence at a control is registered using an App on your mobile phone, normally the free MapRun App.

Terrain type: Parkland

Results

KNC 16 - Results

Series Scores after KNC 16

Report

I like Epsom Downs as a night O venue, as being both reasonably safe for beginners and surprisingly challenging for experts. It’s easy to know roughly where you are, and easy to get back to base if lost. But finding the right feature in the small patches of woodland can be tricky, as can finding the start of the path you want when you have to navigate across several hundred meters of relatively featureless grassland first.

One of the challenges of planning a score event is keeping the fastest navigators occupied for a full hour, without scattering controls over too wide an area – either because the area simply isn’t wide enough, or because you want to get controls in quickly and go down the pub. I’m not keen on the usual method “90’s & 100’s” or “odds & events” method of splitting the controls into two sets, with one set to be visited before starting the other. This is fine for the experts, but frustrating for slower runners who have to pass near controls in the ‘wrong’ set without punching.

Hence my decision to use a format new to the Kent Night Cup series, shamelessly pinched from Jane Lambert’s Southdowns Christmas score event. Novices could score from every control they could find; those wanting the maximum score had to find sets of three to punch consecutively. And somehow finding sets of three out of 20 controls, thus having two controls which could not be part of a set, seems harder than it would be been with 18 or 21 controls.

From the organiser/planner/control hanger perspective, the event turned out unexpectedly stressful. At the end of my longest control planting loop, I found to my horror that the stake I was about to place in the ground no longer had an SI unit on it. It definitely had one when I dibbed to wake them all up at the start of the loop, so the control was on the ground somewhere. Fortunately I had a spare SI unit, so I put that out, and the results computer was hastily reprogrammed to translate the new number. This is why your splits printout said “111” where you were expecting “92”, but the results on the web correctly show “92”.

At the start, I asked everybody to keep an eye out for the control unit, and then set off to retrace my steps in the hope of finding it myself. This took a little bit too long; my apologies for the resulting queue to download.

I needn’t have bothered, as the eagle-eyed Dan Sullivan picked up the control on the way round – thanks Dan! It must have been distracting carrying around a SIAC-enabled control which kept bleeping in response to being near a SIAC dibber. I was wondering whether we should give Dan a bonus point, but no need as he won anyway!

For the record, I think the shortest ‘purple line’ route to visit all the controls in any order was 8.6km. Going for the maximum score with bonuses, the shortest ‘purple line’ route I found was 94-90-91,92,102-100-101,103-104-105,93-95-96,106-107-108,109,98-99-97 (or the reverse) which surprisingly is not all that much longer at 10.1km. A lot more thinking time required though, as well as the extra distance. If Dan had found the time to visit 109 too, his route would have been about 100m longer; the extra planning time to detect this difference would certainly have exceeded the time saved.

My thanks to everyone who came, and in particular John Cross & Mark Glaisher for help with the computer and results, and Sarah Scarbrough, Ian Roberts, Peter Martin & Mark Ford for control collecting.

Ian Ditchfield

Last updated: Sun 09 February, 2025

Overview

Event being organised by Mole Valley Orienteering Club at this iconic venue - home of the prestigious Derby since 1780.

You too can be Pinza, Nijinsky, or Shergar for the evening. Actually you can't, because only our four legged friends are allowed on the racecourse track itself (OOB for orienteers), but you get to run around the surrounding area.

New (for KNC) scoring system. Full details at https://mvoc.org/event/mole-night-event-on-epsom-downs/

Location Info

Near: Epsom
Lat,Lng: 51.30823,-0.24948

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Pre-event Details

Contacts / Officials

Organiser: Ian Ditchfield

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