· Contact the landowner(s). Initial contact will have already been made by the events officer. In this conversation you want to remind the landowner that the event is taking place, find out if there are any out of bounds areas, and arrange a date / time for your first visit to the map.

· Get copies of old courses on the area, and the results from these. Start to think about where you would like the courses to go, and how long they would be. For Okere I decided about 4km for the long red course, and to have a total of 4 or 5 courses.

· Initial familiarisation visit to map. Just go out and have a look around. Try running around areas you think the courses will visit. Are there any obvious map corrections? Is the area harder / easier / steeper / flatter / greener than what you had initially thought? Does this mean you should alter your proposed course lengths? If you know the area well, then this visit can often be left out.

· Plan the courses. Plenty has been written on this, here’s just a few ideas:

• It’s OK to use the same controls on different courses, provided they are of a similar difficulty. At Okere course 2 had 2 controls of it’s own, then it used course 1 controls for the rest. Because course 1 went out further, course 2 was able to "cut the corner", so it actually had different legs with the same controls.
  Also, most orienteers will only do one course, so it doesn’t matter if several courses use the same control, because they won’t be going out there again anyway.
• Make sure the novice course (white) is really easy. Many newcomers will do this first, so lets not put them off.
• Make the next course up easy also - the newcomer is likely to want to do this course also.
• Minimising the number of controls here can make a big time saving later on. At Okere I used 21 controls for the top 4 courses, and 8 controls for the novice course.
• Draw up a master map with all controls on it, and number them. Use these numbers from now on to refer to controls - it avoids confusion. At a later point you can assign control codes to each site.

· Visit the map, and run round your chosen control sites. It is usually not necessary to run every course, just visit each control. Are the controls appropriate to the difficulty of the course? Is the map correct where the controls are? Its OK to change the sites during this visit. Don’t forget to tell the landowner you are coming.

· Review your courses. Draw up master maps for each course, and also an overall master map. Select control standards, and assign each one to a control number on your master map. At this point I also organised them into groups for putting the controls out, so I didn’t lose a control in the following week.

· The day before the event, put out the controls. This should be easy because you have visited each control previously.

· On the day of the event, arrive early so you have plenty of time to get ready. Try and have enough helpers so you don’t actually have to do much work. Instead you can solve any problems which arise at the last moment. At Okere Falls we had two people on the caravan (they took turns so the other could go running), one on the start/finish, and one offering coaching advice to orienteers.

· After the event get as many people as possible to help collect controls and pack up the equipment. There are usually people around who don’t mind helping out for a few minutes, especially if they have enjoyed their courses.

· When you get home, write up the results / course setters comments straight away. This is often seen as an arduous task, so the best approach is to get it done, and then you can forget about it. It is really good for the newsletter / publicity officer in the club if they can get the information on the day of the event.

Once you have done all that, you've finished. Well done!

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