JWOC 2017 - Tampere, Finland - 9th to 15th July Photo credit to Dave Yee Photography and Vivianne Lawson. Maps from worldofo.com (Men's Long, Women's Sprint, Men's Middle Qualification(2) ). SHUOC captain Nathan Lawson and treasurer Alice Rigby were selected as part of a team of 12 athletes to represent Great Britain at the Junior World Orienteering Championships in Finland after a highly competitive selection process. Middle Qualifier - Alice narrowly missed qualifying the top 20 cutoff for the Women's A final by 5 places finishing 25th in her qualifier. Nathan finished 42nd in his heat. Sprint - Alice finished 27th overall out of 149 entrants, only 1 minute and 52 seconds behind the winner. Long - Both athletes finished well with Nathan coming 47th and Alice 65th on tough technical courses of 10.7km and 7.4km respectively. Relay - Nathan ran for the Men's A team finishing 18th and Alice for the Women's B team finishing 23rd. Congrats to team GB who finished 6th overall out of the 38 represented countries!! Full results are available here Scottish Six Days - Royal Deeside, Scotland - 28th July - 3rd August Various SHUOC members traveled north to compete in the biennial event consisting of 6 days of orienteering in the tough terrain of the Scottish highlands. Winners in each category were decided by taking each athletes best 4 results out of the 6 races.
Dane Blomquist and Matt Elkington finished 7th and 11th respectively on the highly competitive M21E category. Alice Rigby and Stephen Elkington both earned bronze medals finishing 3rd on the W20L and M20S. Nathan Lawson also finished strongly at 9th out of 32 in the M20L. Full results available here Intrepid explorers journeyed their way down to "that London" to compete in the annual Jan Kjellstrom (JK) competition... what else would you do on an Easter Weekend?! The first day took place on the campus of Brunel University for the Sprint. The opportunity to use the SI Air, a contact less dibber, added to the excitement. The elite men's course was a 2.7km straight line route. The top ten was filled with SPOOK and ShUOC members with Kris Jones and Ralph Street in 1st and 2nd, Jonny Crickmore in 5th, Willy Garner in 7th and Dane Blomquist in 9th. ShUOC really represented in the M21E class with Adam Potter (11th), Matthew Elkington (18th), Olly Williams (25th), Nicholas Barber (34th), Alex Moore (40th), Edward Lawrence (60th), Adam Walker (73rd) and Tom Entwistle (75th). In the Men's M20E class Nathan Lawson started off his successful weekend by finishing 2nd, with James Mellor finishing in 25th, Stephen Elkington in 29th and Alex Bett (33rd) overall. Alice Rigby flew round the W20 elite and finished 2nd, a mere 1 second behind the winner.Katie Blacford also race W20E finishing 14th. Meanwhile in the W21E Tamsin Moran narrowly missed a top ten position finishing 12th over all. Honorary aussie member and commentators worst nightmare, Aislinn Prendergast finished 18th, Hannah Bradley (32nd) and Katherine Bett (47th). Some lucky ShUOCer's were then driven home or to comfortable hospitality establishments with soft bedding and food paid for by their parents. However, a lucky 8 drove on to Brighton to stay in what one trip adviser review called a Gulag. After a nights "sleep" in a bunk bunkbedded, curtainless dormitory shared with various hen parties they were ready to take on the middle distance. Alice Rigby again competed in the W20E and managed to run for less distance than she did during the sprint. She added to her brilliant result of the previous day by finishing 4th overall. Aislinn, Tamsin and Hannah again raced in the W21E over 5km placing 18th, 21st and 31st respectively. Katherine Bett ran the W21L course and finished 14th overall. Nathan Lawson continued his streak of brilliance and finished 3rd on M20E, with James Mellor placing 24th overall, only 13 minutes down on the leader. Stephen Elkington ran M20S this day and came in in 3rd position on the 3km long course. The Men's M21E was again led by SPOOK members; Ralph Street (1st) and Kris Jones (3rd). Dane Blomquist narrowly missed a top ten position finishing 11th. Unfortunately he didn't manage to miss a log leaving him with a substantial bruise and sadly unable to race for the rest of the weekend. Matthew Elkington place in the top 20, finishing 17th overall, Adam Potter (25th), Olly Williams (40th), Nic Barber (41st), Alex Moore (56th), Edward Lawrence (71st), Adam Walker (77th) and Tom Entwistle (79th). A trip to Brighton Beach, a weatherspoons and another "good" nights sleep later and if all our members would make it out of the rhododendrons. Nathan Lawson decided he quite liked placing in the top 3 and finished 3rd again over the 12.4km course, James Mellor also finished within the top 20. Stephen Elkington again ran M20S, however this time he won! in a time of 52:19. Adam Walker finished in the top 10 (8th) on the M21S, beating off future brother in law Thomas Butt. Tom Entwistle ran M21L of 14.4km distance and found that jelly babies can be life savers (24th). The M21E consisted of 17.7km climb and 390m climb. SPOOK showed the course what they were made of with Ralph Street and Kris Jones finishing 2nd and 3rd prospectively. Matthew Elkington finished an impressive 16th, only 16 minutes behind the leaders. Adam Potter was only shortly behind in 19th, Nic Barber (25th), Alex Moore (48th) and Edward Lawrence (54th). On W20E Alice finished in 6th overall, only 2 minutes behind 1st, proving just how competitive this age category was over the weekend. Katherine Bett again competed in W21L, finishing 15th overall. Tamsin Moran had an amazing race on the 11.9km W21E giving her a finishing position of 14th. Aislinn came in just behind in 18th and Hannah Bradley in 25th. On the 4th and final day came the relays. ShUOC entered 4.6 teams in the Men's Trophy and 1 team in the Women's trophy, The Women, ShUOC Pop Tarts (Alice Rigby, Hannah Bradley and Tamsin Moran) finished 6th overall. Aislinn ran for SYO and came home with a trophy after winning! Following injuries from sticks and punctured lungs the ShUOC men's teams faced some reorganisation. Men of Steel (Nathan Lawson, Adam Potter, Matthew Elkington) finished 6th Dashing for Dashley (Olly Williams, Alex Moore and Nic Barber) 13th ShUOC C-men (James Mellor, Joe Thomas, Edward Lawrence) 26th ShUOC morning glory (Alex Bett, Katie Blackford, Stephen Elkington) 30th Rivelin Rascals lacked a 3rd member but Egil Morast and Tom Entwistle placed 23rd and 33rd on their legs. HUGE congratulations to Nathan Lawson and Alice Rigby for placing 3rd and 5th overall in the competition. Photos taken from Will Heap, Wendy Carlyle and Rob Lines 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! 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! 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. 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! |
Archives
May 2024
|