Sean Harrington was the organiser of this years East Midlands Championships at Chambers Wood that was hosted by Lincoln Orienteering Group. Here he gives his insight into his planning and coordination of the event. 

We tend to do things slightly different from other clubs, as I tend to be the organiser for all our events the planner takes on some of the traditional organiser roles.

Prior to the event

My first job was to arrange for a suitable parking area for the event, as this was quite a small area I requested that all entries made every effort to car share to help us out. I then had to arrange for portable toilets to be available on the day of the competition.

About three weeks before the event I sent out an email to all club members requesting their help on the day for jobs including Computers, Car Parking, Start & Finish Teams and Control collectors. After I had received all the replies I then produced a list of all the helpers and their jobs on the day.

On the Friday before the event I went to the parking area to take delivery of the Portable toilets to make sure they were put in a safe place for people to use.

On  Saturday I had to go to a container where we store all our kit to load my car up with all the equipment we would need to run the event.

Event Day

On the Sunday I arrived at the parking area at 8:30 am, having already put out signage to the event on my way. Then it was just a matter of making sure all the helpers knew what job they were doing. By about 12:00pm when I was happy all things were going smoothly I went for my own run.

Courses closed at 2:00 pm and time to collect all the controls in and tidy all the other things up which was completed by about 3.30pm, I then left for home arriving back by 4.00pm.

Results and round up

Club member Paul Murgatroyd provided this round up of the event, including a link to the results. Congratulations to all who were awarded prizes at the event!

Post event

On the Monday it was then two trips back to the container to return all the kit we had used.