So, following the PT in August, the events madness has continued into September.

Park World Tour

Zolt Lenkei in the PWT prologue

First off was the hugely successful Park World Tour in Perth and, aside from the PT, it was easily one of the best events, with the best group of people, that I’ve been able to work on. Over the last year I’ve been advising on the marketing and doing the design for the event. I’ve made a ridiculous number of flyers and adverts for print, as well as doing large banners and other promo items. Over the course of the weekend I was out taking photos and contributing to the live twitter feed of the event, as well as helping out with the press side of things.

It was great to see many of these on display at the weekend, as well as seeing the whole event come together. Having not made it to any of the committee meetings since the first, I’ve not really been in the loop as to what has been happening, but the entire team overseen brilliantly by Scott did an incredible job in their areas to stage the best event I’ve seen in this country. While there were some mad rushes and the odd thing going astray, the whole event went brilliantly, predominantly down to effective delegation of duties which is what the event organisers role should be about.

Tessa Hill exiting one of the narrow Perth alleyways

Corporate challenges

Then last week I had the opportunity to work on a couple of corporate events, first off with Trailplus helping with their SportIdent scoring of a large corporate challenge for Lloyds TSB at Hambleden near Henley. This was a great day out of the office, with blazing sunshine and a good group of people to work with making for an enjoyable day. The event seemed to go really well from what I saw, and it was really interesting to see how Lloyds are leveraging their London 2012 sponsorship internally and embedding the Olympic messages with their own corporate values and objectives.

Often sport sponsorship is only seen as outward facing, but I think it is really important to really investigate what can be gained internally from it too, and make this most of this. The Olympics probably has more Lose Weight Exercise than most other sponsorships for this, given it has a much wider appeal than simply one team or specific event.

As part of the day at Hambledon, Lloyds had some top athletes helping out with some of the challenges and giving speeches. One being multiple Olympic medalist Matthew Pinsent, with the other being a particularly inspiring Paralympian Basketball player Clare Strange. In terms of harnessing the power of sport, the drivers for success in sport can very easily be transferred to business, and it’d be easier (certainly for me) to take on board a speech from a Paralympic athlete than some chief exec when looking for motivation, in any aspect of life.

The following day I was helping Threshold Sports run a corporate challenge for Nokia as part of a Three Mobile sales conference in Kensington. The conference was Super Hero themed, and so was the challenge, which led to an entertaining, if rather soggy, day. I was generally acting as a runner, and doing my usual thing of putting out and getting in checkpoints. Being an orienteer this has become the staple role of mine helping at adventure races, I’m a fan of precision and checkpoints being in the wrong places is a massive bugbear!

Once again, it was interesting to see how Nokia used the key messages from Three’s sales conference and corporate objectives, and combined these with the opportunity to showcase a new product and embed their own messages in an entertaining and engaging manner.

Rat Race Adventure

One of my fave Rat Race CP location finds, a graffiti'd tank

This weekend it was the final Rat Race of the season, and a biggie. Not only was it the 30th Rat Race of all time, it was also the biggest yet. Having been involved in the races since the first one back in 2004 in Edinburgh, it’s great to have seen the event evolve over the years and see so many people of all shapes and sizes take on the challenge of beating the 9 to 5!

The fact that my usual role of supporting the race director has got easier and easier over the years is testament to the increasing professionalism and constant refinement of the race by the organisers. Stewart has done a great job over the past two years in making it look very easy, and this comes back to the earlier point of effective delegation.

Making event organisation look easy

So, for big events, here’s some tips I’ve clearly seen in practice this month to make it look easy:

• Delegate, delegate, delegate, then…
• Make sure everyone clearly knows their role, and leave them to get on with it (perhaps with some gentle prodding)
• Avoiding giving people superfluous detail, it’s a distraction from the task in hand, keep specifics on a need to know basis.

I’ll try to keep these in mind next time I organise a big event and put them into practice, they don’t really work when running an almost one man event like the Purple Thistle!

Since the 5th August I’ve been in Scotland, doing a variety of things in a number of different places. This is probably the longest I’ve spent back in Scotland since moving to London, and it is probably also the longest I’ve spent away from London too.

I must admit that I haven’t really missed city life at all, I’ve missed people but not the location. Maybe the fact that being mainly on holiday affects how much normal life is missed, switching off from the day to day drudgery but also forgetting the things that make somewhere great.

So where have I been? First off, after a pleasant sleeper journey north, I had a brief stop at home prior to meeting up with Andy & the rest of the boys for his stag do at Belladrum festival.

Belladrum

I must admit that looking at the lineup in advance didn’t fill me with enthusiasm, but it turned out to be a great weekend on all fronts! Musical discoveries (The Burns Unit, Beth Jeans Houghton) and old favourites (King Creosote, Divine Comedy doing My Lovely Horse) coupled with good food, interesting Q&A & debate sessions, guid banter and a vast quantity of alcohol (we had finished our vast supplies by Saturday lunchtime) made for a good time.

Purple Thistle

The last week has mainly been spent in and around Balmacara on the west coast of Scotland, near to Kyle of Lochalsh, and a part of the world that I’ve not fully explored previously. The main reason for being there was to stage a two day orienteering event, the Purple Thistle, part of the ethos of which is to take people to places they’d never otherwise get to visit.

In orienteering terms Balmacara is well off the beaten track, at least two hours away from the main orienteering clubs of Inverness and Speyside, neither club is ever likely to bother attempting to stage an event there. Too costly. Too much effort. I don’t know quite what the reasons would be, maybe just a lack of ingenuity, but we somehow make it work in remote areas and attract a decent crowd.

Me, my fellow planner Duncan, and a couple of friends roped in to help us out, were all that was needed to put on what was regarded as a tough but enjoyable event. We had over 200 competitors from across the UK, with some from further afield (Japan, Spain, Switzerland) making the effort to take up the PT challenge. People took the event in the right spirit, being low key & laid back, and despite the tough courses came back smiling having enjoyed the technical terrain & stunning scenery.

Holidaying on the West Coast

Afterwards, I headed back home for a night to see my Ma on her birthday, then had a few days back on the west coast on actual holiday!

Holiday for me often means activity, so Eddie & I went running up hills and put some good miles in on the bike, the highlight of which was the Tour de Applecross.

This was a 101km trip, over the highest road in Britain to Applecross then round the north of the peninsula. The main climb (626m in 10km) was tough, but not too bad despite the rain. However the descent was scary to say the least! I found the climbs on the rest of the route were far tougher, unrelenting ups and downs over ridges meant we climbed a further 800m or so, and I came pretty close to the wall for a while. Some more food perked me up tho, and Eddie & I nailed the final 20km at a good pace to finish in 4:45.

They do a cycle race over a similar, but longer, route which takes on the monstrous climb and the loop round the northern section of the peninsula. Not overly into road cycling races but this looks like one I might have to try and take in at some point, especially as they close the road off for a few hours which would help on both the climb and the descent!

Aside from cycling and running, we generally chilled out, caught up on sleep, ate well and watched lots of tv & films – mainly about cycling teams taking on le tour. I’d heartily recommend both Overcoming, about Bjarne Riis’ Team CSC at the 2004 Tour de France, while similarly Hell on Wheels follows the Deutch Telekom team during the 2003 tour. Quite contrasting films, and teams, with Hell on Wheels being more entertaining viewing, following a good natured team and some interesting characters, while Overcoming shows the difficulties faced by a team of top pros financed and managed by a former champion.

And back home

Back to London, back to reality, although more trips to Scotland follow soon enough though, with Andy’s wedding and the Park World Tour in September…