Novelty Event    23 March 2009

          Rick doing the admin in the twilight.

After many ideas the concept was to hold an event where runners had to not only visit a certain number of controls, but also to visit a certain number of each set of controls.  The inspiration for the format came from news articles indicating that Australia had become the most obese nation on earth.  By labelling the 20 controls on the map into groups of Carbohydrates, Proteins, Fruits and Vegetables (5 of each), I was able to force runners to collect a balanced diet. 

The instructions were that each course had to collect a minimum number of a specified food group to achieve the number controls required.  In this instance the requirements were A course 5 Vegetables, B course 4 Fruits, C course 3 Proteins & D course 2 Proteins. With the start location in the south east corner of the map, the course was designed with the 5 vegetables across the centre of the map, the 5 fruits top and bottom, 5 Proteins vaguely North South up the middle and the 5 carbohydrates filling in the gaps. This forced different courses to adopt different strategies for the event.

The event appeared well received with many different courses being selected. Ideas were then floated by several runners to expand the concept for future score course training runs / novelty events to force runners to get a truly balanced diet ie the same number of each food group to score points.

                                                                        Rick Bailes

Lauris and Ian Stirling ( Street O Coordinator)

 Mark pleased to finish ahead of the fast finishing Ray