Majorly over due catch up

Despite my lack of posts many members of ShUOC have continued to be busy bunnies. 

EUROMEETING 
Matthew Elkington "enjoyed" a very sober freshers week in preparation for Euromeeting 2016 which was held in Latvia from the 22nd - 25th of September.   The first event was the middle distance event on the 23/09 which consisted of 6km of hilly forest terrain. Matt was 4th Brit and SPOOK member William Gardner who was 2nd Brit. 
The next day came the long distance, which turned out to be a very tough course with only 55 out of 74 runners finishing on the men's Elite. Both Matt and Will raced the 14.5km course with 600m of climb, Will even had time to leave a present behind for Matt to find - true friendship. 
The competition closed with the sprint race, during which Willy was second male Brit home and Matt was 3rd Brit.
Matt really enjoyed his time in Latvia  , "Latvia is the best place I've ever been, everyone should go there"*
*may not be a word for word quote

Results for this can be found here: http://www.euromeeting.woc2018.lv/

Junior European Cup 
Dane Blomquist, Nathan Lawson and Alice Rigby travelled to Scotland for JEC 2016 on the 30th of September till the 2nd of October
Dane was 17th overall in the sprint, finishing less than 2 minutes behind the winner. Nathan was hot on Dane's heels and finished only 30 seconds being the Hallam student on the 2.5km course. 
ShUOC also had some representation in the W20 category from Alice Rigby who finished 19th overall.

Dane raced first leg for GBR in the relay and finished 6th overall on his leg whilst Nathan ran 3rd leg for GBR 2.  Alice also ran 3rd leg for her relay team bringing them in to finish within the top 20 teams. 

The competition ended with the long distance race where the M20's ran 9.1km with 440m of climb, here Dane finished in a time of 70 minutes to finish 16th overall with Nathan only 10 minutes behind. 
The W20's raced for 7km with 315m of climb, here Alice finished just outside the top 20 but was 2nd Brit to finish overall. 

More results can be found here: http://www.scottish-orienteering.org/jec2016/results

The Langdale Horseshoe 
On the 8th of October - an absolute beaut of a day - was the Langdale Horseshoe, the last in the 2016 series for the English Fell running Championships. The long race is 21.1km/13.1miles with 1450m/4757ft of climb. The race heads up to Stickle Tarn, along to Angle Tarn and up Esk Hause. Skirting under Esk Pike the runners then summit Bow Fell, before heading along Crinkle Crags, negotiating the bad step before dropping onto Pike O'Blisco and descending to the finish. 
This year SPOOK and ShUOC had an impressive turn out who the finished to feature in the top 10. 
Rhys Findlay- Robinson - 4th, Jonny Crickmore - 6th, Jack Wright - 9th and Nic Barber 10th. 

ShUOC Lakes Weekend
On the same weekend as the Langdale, more ShUOC travelled up to the south lakes to stop at High Wray to train up our newest members so they can follow in the footsteps of those mentioned above!
We arrived on the Friday where the keenest beans, Dane, Joe, Nathan, Matt, Max and Aislinn went off to scare some sheep with a bit of night-o.  
Saturday morning was dedicated to more orienteering training near Holme Fell, with a bit of coaching from our more experienced members, finished off with a clock relay, with varying levels of success from each team. 
In the afternoon we travelled to Tarn Hows for some more orienteering/map run/ trailfell run. 
Some very tired bodies arrived back at High Wray for some luke warm and baltic showers before heading out to Ambleside YHA for tea. 
The next day to recover from any potential DOMS group fell runs were planned. The long run, consisting of Nic, Jonny, Matt, Dan, Adam and Max ran up to Crinkle Crags and onto Pike O'Blisco whilst soaking up some of the rare Cumbrian Sun.
A larger group  went for a slightly shorter route up Pike O'Blisco via Red Tarn where we bumped in to Alice and Joe. Along with Dane and Nathan, they had ran straight up Pike O'Blisco to being some very technical orienteering training. 
From the summit the fell runners  split into those who fancied an orienteering tour of Pike O'Blisco with Tamsin and Edward to help make more sense of maps and the rest who ran straight home. 
This was an absloutely brilliant weekend and perfect introduction to orienteering, proper fell running and the lake district.