Firstly we feel that we owe competitors an apology for two issues that arose with the control descriptions and map printing from which we will learn lessons to put into action in the future. As many will be aware, there was an issue with loose control descriptions, which appear to have been printed from an older file than the maps and was not picked up before the earlier starters went out. Once this became a known issue we did inform competitors, which put the earlier starters at a disadvantage.

A second issue arose with the border added to the map and a shifting of the map which meant a reasonable route choice was removed and could have been used by those with local knowledge or if they had run at Stroud previously.

Whilst neither of these issues are ideal, this does highlight the pressure the volunteers who are vital to events happening, come under to get everything right, whilst also having to deal with things that are totally unrelated to putting on such events in 'real life'.. In this instance, as Controller I should take responsibility, but there were issues away from the event that meant I did not focus fully on checking for such issues and I can only apologise and learn from this. Similarly, I am sure NGOC will learn and put into practice, improvements as far as possible to reduce the likelihood of such errors occurring in the future.

Overall, we hope these issues did not detract from your overall enjoyment of the event and the courses that Tom planned, with the navigational challenges, along with the hills of Stroud.

Paul Gebbett (BOK)

Outcome of Review of Protest and Impact on Results

We did effectively receive one protest on the Ultra Veteran Women's Class and having reviewed the results and the impact that had on this particular course, we have taken the decision to void the first two legs on this course. The final results will be updated to reflect this change. We have reviewed all other courses and there would be very little if any impact on results (I also spoke to a few people at Worcester who appeared to be impacted, but they said this was not the case). Therefore all other results stand.

We also reviewed the results on course 4, which was most impacted by the route choice cut off the map on leg 1 to 2, and this does not impact on the results as far as we can tell and therefore no further action has been taken.

Planner's Comments

We're sorry about the issues with control descriptions and the course 4 map - we'll look at how we can improve procedures to avoid this in future. We hope it didn't detract too much from what was intended to be an enjoyable run around the hills of Stroud. Thanks to everyone who gave their time to help put on the event, particularly to Paul for controlling.

Tom Cochrane (NGOC)