Running to catch up

After a period of silence it's time to try to catch up. There have been all sorts of things I have been meaning to write about, but just never seemed to get round to. The moral is to do it little and often, rather than trying to write carefully crafted pieces as you would elsewhere. Let's see what you missed:

• The World Rowing Championships, which were held at Dorney Lake near Eton. We went along to one of the qualifying days just to get a feel for what the World Championships of another sport are like. Lots of similarities, lots of differences, but it must be said that orienteering came out OK by comparison with what is meant to be a much higher-profile Olympic sport, and one which clearly has a lot more money involved. WOC 2006 definitely had a bigger screen than them!
• The World University Orienteering Championships. GB showed yet again that they have potential, even if not quite in the expected places. The men had an average week, but the women got it all together and won the relay. Again.
• The BOF Major Events Conference. I was drafted in at a late stage to present the planning sessions, and spent an enjoyable weekend in Slimbridge with the key officials from BOC, BRC, JK and National Events in 2007 and 2008. This reconfirmed the dedication of people to putting on high-quality events, but also reinforced that we still aren't finding enough new people to take on major roles. I was the youngest person there. We even managed to get a few more things sorted out about JK 2008, which will be in the south east.
• The WOC database that I have now got to a stage where it is producing quite interesting results. More coming soon about that one...