This year ShUOC had the privileged (and stress) of hosting BUCS. First things first, a HUGE thank you to Rhona McMillan, Ed Nicholas and SYO as without whom this weekend would not have been possible.  
40 runners from both Uni of and Hallam represented ShUOC during the weekend. 
Saturday’s individual race took place at Wharncliffe, just north of Sheffield, in some less than ideal conditions.
The rain and wind didn't stop our captain Tamsin Moran from finishing 14th on the 6.6km long Women’s A course. Hallam's token female, Hannah Bradley finished in 18th just ahead of Uni of's Katrina Hemingway in 21st. Katie Blackford, Katherine Bett, Winona Shaw, Hannah Horsewill finished in 35th, 40th, 41st and 46th respectively.  On the Women’s B, Jade Bowling (Uni of) was just outside the medals, finishing fourth after 4.2km of racing. Ellen Quane was hot on her heels in 7th. I don't think anyone could say it better than Beyoncé "Who run the world? GIRLS". 

Now as we are not a sexist club, on to our fabulous men's results. Boys done good! 
In the Men’s A, Dane Blomquist took the bronze medal for Hallam. Three runners from the University of Sheffield also finished in the top ten, with Matt Elkington, Joe Woodley and Olly Williams taking fifth, sixth and ninth place respectively over 10.6km. Nathan Lawson came in 11th, Adam Potter in 18th, Nic Barber, 20th, Ciaran Allen, 27th, Alex Moore, 34th, James Mellor, 39th, Edward Lawrence, 40th, Joe Thomas, 47th, Will Parkinson, 57th and Tom Entwistle finished in 79th.
In the Men’s B race, Adam Walker (Hallam) took the bronze and Stephen Elkington (Uni of) finished fourth on the 6.6km course. Rory McBride finished within the top ten (9th), Rasmus Kilp, 12th, Edward Thompson, 13th, Dan Cade (Hallam), 17th, Ari Hodgson, 18th.  Some amazing results, especially from those who had their debut this BUCS. 

After some speedy showering and scrubbing up some amazing costumes of animated film characters appeared. However, nothing quite touched the shoal of mermaids which ShUOC had become.   
After having our fill at an all you can eat buffet on west street we travelled up to Bar One for the most important race of the weekend.... The Beer race. Uni of easily took the title again with Hallam coming in a close 2nd. 
The relays were held in Hugset Wood, near Barnsley. All competitors were bright eyed and bushy tailed for the 9am start time. 
The Uni of women’s first team, Team Quirky, consisting of Katrina Hemmingway, Alice Rigby, and Tamsin Moran finished with a silver medal. ShUOC Pop Tarts (Katie Blackford, Winona Shaw and Katherine Bett) and If found return to Sheffield (Hannah Horsewill, Jade Bowling and Ellen Quane) unfortunately were disqualified.. someones got some pints to buy! But apart from a couple of minor control related slip ups the girls all have good runs. 
In the men’s relay, the Uni of “Men of Steel” also took the silver medal, made up of Olly Williams, Joe Woodley and Matt Elkington. Dashing for Dashley finished 6th (Nic Barber, Nathan Lawson and Adam Potter), ShUOC C-men, 12th (Ciaran Allen, James Mellor and Alex Moore), in 13th were Hallum till I die (Dane Blomquist, Patrick Jones and Adam Walker), ShUOC men of glory, 18th (Joe Thomas, Edward Lawrence and Will Parkinson), Rivelin Rascals, 25th (Alex Bett, Tom Entwistle, Stephen Elkington) and Porter Perverts in 30th (Rory McBride, Edward Thompson and Cameron Laight). 
Well done for battling the hangovers and finishing! 

*sappy emotional bit* Thank you to each and everyone of ShUOC for making this weekend such an amazing weekend and for helping to make the weekend run. I'm gonna have ALOT of FOMO when ShUOC is at BUCS in Oxford next year. 

On the 16th of February some ShUOC and SPOOK members travelled to Armagh for the Armagh 5km and the Sprint Orienteering Weekend. 
There were some cracking results in the 5km, notably Kris Jones (SPOOK) showing that orienteers can run a bit quick in a time of 14:03.
Men's results can be found here: https://www.armagh5k.com/assets/results/2017/2017-men-5k.pdf

On the 17th in the night race of the weekend, ShUOC and SPOOK impressively took 1st, 5th, 7th and 10th (Jonny Crickmore, Willy Garner, Kris Jones and Nathan Lawson, respectively). 
Further results can be found here: http://www.niorienteering.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Night-Results-Simple.pdf

The sprint event consisted of 3 heats. In the first heat, SPOOK member Kris Jones took first place. Dane placed 4th in the 2nd heat with Olly Williams close behind in 5th.  Jonny Crickmore and Nathan Lawson placed 2nd and 6th respectively in the 3rd heat. 
In the women's 2nd heat Charlotte Ward came 5th in a time of 26:04. 

http://www.niorienteering.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Armagh-Heats-Results.pdf

Jonny Crickmore, Dane Blomquist, Nathan Lawson and Olly Williams all qualified for the Men's A finals with Kris Jones taking 1st place. 

On the 19th the urban event was held. Willy Garner (SPOOK) came into his own to place 4th in the Men's Open, with Nathan Lawson placing 15th. 
http://lvo.org.uk/liveresults/

Well done lads and lass, hopefully the aftermath of the races and festivities have worn off. 

Mean while in Sheffield... 
ShUOC hosted a weekend of orienteering training for JROS (Junior Regional Orienteering Squads). This consisted of a mixture of sprint, urban and forest training. Specially thanks to Broomhill Community Centre for being so accommodating. Hopefully see many of the juniors back as members if ShUOC in a few years time!
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There are some very broken people, both young and old, still recovering after this weekend. 
SPOOK definately did not dissapoint! 

On Saturday, we headed out to Loxely Common to paired relays of 3 legs each. ShUOC and SPOOK combined in the form of Matthew Elkington and William Gardner to win over all. Then we all hurried back to Sheffield to get out glad rags on. 
All scrubbed up we descended ton inox dine for some posh food, rice pudding, speeches and questionable dancing. For those of us who didn't feel like it was bed time yet we headed to a VERY sweaty poptarts for some even more questionable shapes to be thrown. 

The struggle was real on Sunday, some of us managed to crawl to the football pitches for a chilly SPOOK vs ShUOC football  on a very muddy pitch. As per tradition SPOOK won, however neither team displayed much football talent.
Hangover still niggling away, it was time for some more drinking!! We headed to Notty House for some cider and beer courtesy of SPOOK. Awards for bad behaviour in the past year were dished out and the beer races begun, SPOOK dominated the mens races, and there was a VERY questionable win by SPOOK in the womens races. We then toddled round to a ShUOC house for some more drinking. 

The weekend was a huge success, and a large number of us never want to drink again. 

Dane Blomquist also managed an impressive 2nd at the 3rd South Yorkshire Cross Country Champs

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. 

. ShUOC finished off the summer with our yearly trip to AVIEMORE!!  
Members of Shuoc descended on the small Scottish town after hours of driving. However, this didn't put us off from the first Vault trip of the year... It has been too long!! 

Nursing a few sore heads and queasy stomachs we headed out to Anagach for some orienteering training and a good game of Sardines.More people were lost in Sardines than in the orienteering... RESULT!  Since the sun was on our shoulders we decided a swim in the River Spey was in order... However the temperature of the river was baltic and put off some of our less hardy members. 
That evening a magical game of wizard staff occurred, which included much staff fighting and getting most wise! 

On the Monday we travelled out to Loch Vaa for more orienteering training on its beautiful contours! Both individual and relay training were practised. An ever so slightly more subdued evening took place in preparation for the alch-o which would occur the following day. To add some difficulty and test out our brains we tasked everyone to carve out a fruit or vegetable of their choice to drink from all evening. A wide range was selected from potato to pineapple to lemon with varying degrees of success. 

Tuesday arrived with the promise of the alc-o, orienteering whilst consuming copious amounts of alcohol. As always this was a roaring success and was followed by a run home. 

After a lot of orienteering it was now time for some fell running!! ShUOC split into 3 groups, the long run was 20km run including summiting Ben MacDui, Scotlands 2nd highest peak. Another group went for 10km climbing Cairngorm and another group went to play with some reindeer! We all found each other by Loch Morlich, and Scotlands coldest loch lived up to its claim! As you all know, Wednesday is bake off day! ShUOC snuggled up together with a few beverages and many rules to the bake off drinking game, which was enjoyed by even those who lie and pretend to not enjoy watching Mary and Paul's judging. To add some more entertainment to this evening we imposed a not clothes clothes rule, so ShUOC got creative and some beautiful outfits were crafted out of, boxes, bubble wrap and sanitary pads to name a few. 

On the morning of our last day we woke up to some more common Scottish weather, torrential rain. After a slow start the bravest of the group travelled to Inshriach for some more orienteering, others stayed in Aviemore for some running and the least hardy went to the spa for a swim! Regrouping later in the day we went for a very enthusiastic game of mini golf. 
Excitement brewing it was finally time for the highlight of the week, pizza and wine followed by our last trip to the vault! Our finial trip to vault did not disappoint! 

Saturday was a very busy day for fell running success! Ellen Quane raced in the Peak District Intro Ultra, 30 miles with 1388 meters of climb. 

Ellen was 5th lady and 31st over all in her first ever ultra race in a time of 6 hours!! Ellen also raised £280 for Stannington Brass Band's trip to the nationals, if you would also like to donate follow this link : https://localgiving.org/appeal/StanningtonBandNationalFinals/ 

Huge well done Ellen! 

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5 ShUOC members braved the elements on Saturday 20th August to race in the penultimate race in the English Fell Running Championship series; Pendle 3 Peaks. 
The 9.8 mile/15.88km race incorporates  2800ft/870m of climb as the course works its was around Pendle Hill. 

Matt Elkington and Tom Saville were 1st and 2nd male U23 finishers respectively. 
Nic Barber was 31st male finisher and SPOOK members Rhys Findlay Robinson and Rob Little were 5th and 24th respectively. 

In the women's race, Anna Hoogkamer was 1st U23 and Hannah Bradley was 2nd U23. 
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More results can be found here
http://live7.sportident.co.uk/home/multistage/stage/results.html?multistageid=80745944-8c21-4c02-a874-53ca8805553a&multistageclass=off&mobile=false

On Saturday 6th August the first long distance race of the English Fell Running Championships.
The 27km race climbs Bessy Boot and then Scafell Pike via the shelter at Esk Hause. Following a technical descent to styhead pass before climbing Great Gable, the final climb is from Honister pass to Dale Head Summit, leading to a total 6562 ft of climb. The high fells are often covered in clagg which added an extra navigational challenge, as Dane Blomquist and EUOC's Will Rigg found out. The two orienteers, who both competed at JWOC,  tried to run the route a few days before and ended up in the wrong valley resulting in some rather large taxi fares. 

The demanding race was won in a time of 2 hours 24 minutes by Ricky Lightfoot and the women's race was won by Lou Roberts in a very impressive 3 hours 26 minutes. 

SPOOK's Rhys Findlay-Robinson was 5th in a time of 2 hours 54 minutes and was-SPOOK-now-ShUOC again grandad Nic Barber finished in a time of 3 hours 19 minutes placing him 29th overall. Very good results! 

The fun definitely does not stop for ShUOC over summer! The Great Britain team travelled over to Hungary for the World Uni Championships, the team included ShUOC's William Gardner and Charlotte Ward and SPOOK members Jonny Crickmore and Kris Jones.

The first race was the sprint race, on the 31st of July. In the men's race Kris Jones had an absolutely amazing run, gaining a gold medal for GBR! Kris was 33 seconds clear of 2nd place over the 3.6km course. Willy Gardner came in 6th only 1 minute 13 seconds behind Kris and closely followed by Jonny Crickmore, who finished 12th, 17 seconds behind Will. 
Charlotte Ward finished 7th overall and was 1st finisher for GBR in the 3.3km women's race, only 44 seconds behind the leader in the highly competitive race. 

The mixed sprint relays occurred on the 2nd of August, following the long distance race the day before. The GBR team, consisting of Charlotte Ward, Megan Carter-Davies, Kris Jones and Peter Hodkinson won with a very impressive race and were almost 1 minute clear of Czech Republic team in 2nd. Charlotte Ward ran the first leg, finishing 3rd in a time of 14:21, handing over to Peter Hodkinson, who managed to gain 2 places, bringing the team into 1st. Kris Jones maintained the lead, finishing in a time of 12:46, before handing over to Megan Carter-Davies who brought home the gold for GBR. 

Finally, the 5.6km middle race with 205 meters of climb was raced on the 3rd of August. ShUOC's Willy Gardner finished 12th and was first Brit in the men's race in a time of 36:58. 

Some absolutely fantastic results from all the athletes in the British team, especially those in ShUOC and SPOOK, so much fan girling is going on right now! 

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A massive congratulations to our resident track fairy, Tom Horton, who has managed to win the EA championship 3000m steeple chase on Thursday. Tom, who has only been competing on the track for a year, missed his PB by a hairs breadth finishing in a time of 8:58.81 (0.24 of a second off his PB). 

Very well done Tom! 

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