Horse to the Right
On Friday Night I ran the Mourne Way 10k Night Edition with a group of friends and about 500 others, many of whom I know through the small and friendly running community.
It is the last stretch of the Mourne Way series of races, and generally downhill although what I found was that you don’t really notice hills so much when all you can see is the distance of your torch beam.
The buses dropped us off in what felt like the middle of nowhere, and the image above is the trace left by us all as we made our way back to Rostrevor.
This is the first running of the event, and 26Extreme.com did a fantastic job. All of their events seem to be run with a high degree of professionalism, and I feel very confident when I’m out on the course, and this is all important especially in the environments where they put they’re races on. For each event, they must look at potential risks and generate a plan to manage these, so that those taking part all get what they want from it. In systematically doing this they have built their reputation, and I would certainly consider them to be one of the best in their field.
We could all learn from this, perhaps using the ideas of Risk and Objectives from ISO9001 to help, or even using all the great ideas from ISO9001 to really make a difference.
One slight comedy moment from Friday Night (although admittedly it could have been decidedly ‘unfunny’) came early on when I heard a call from behind: ‘Horse to the Right!’ At that moment, a Shetland Pony ran past us, before turning off the track and rejoining his friends in the adjoining field. Phew!
And the moral of the story…whilst it is better to identify all potential risks, no matter how low or farfetched they seem, sometimes things that you wouldn't even consider just happen!
