We were up early on Saturday as I was organising a morning of coaching for SOC, WIM and SARUM orienteering clubs. It was a gorgeous frosty morning and the views of the Forest as we drove over made it well worth getting up at the crack of dawn on a Saturday.
The technical exercises were planned by a few people from SOC who are trying to qualify as Level 2 coaches with British Orienteering - no mean feat since First For Sport came on board and the amount of paperwork needed increased dramatically. I then planned the final exercise - a caterpillar relay.
The basic structure of the caterpillar relay was the same as a Starburst relay with each team of 3 sharing 2 maps, one with the even controls on (legs) and one with the odd controls on (body parts). The difference was that instead of collecting punches on a control card, the juniors picked up a card with a bit of caterpillar on it at each control, with the aim being to build a complete caterpillar. Unfortunately, accurate navigation didn’t seem to be something that all of them could manage and some controls got visited more often than they should, while others were seen more rarely. This meant that many of the caterpillars looked somewhat deformed and a few people found empty bags at controls where there should have been cards. Next time the cards will be numbered so the juniors know they’re at the right control and can be certain which controls they have left to visit.
[...] lunch, Christine had planned a novel caterpillar relay. Once again, I was just a bystander so could enjoy watching the chaos unfold! Had to collect a few [...]
Thanks Christine for arranging a great morning out on Sat. We all had a great time and particularly enjoyed the relay at the end. Please pass on our thanks to Jez and Di for their patience and help.