It’s great to see that 19 WSX members have been taking part in the MapRun Summer League – and dominating the top 10 positions! In the 4 events held so far, in which Alan Blanchflower has swept all opponents aside, WSX runners have held at least 7 of the top 10 places. Last week’s event was at By the Way in Wimborne and there was much discussion on the WSX Whatsapp group during the week as to the best route – clockwise or anticlockwise – and some even spotted that the MapRun app map extended further north than the printed map, and therefore it was possible to use a path between the two northerly controls. James Crickmore took this route and had just the same distance tracked as Alan, who didn’t use the path, so it didn’t actually give any advantage in that sense. These MapRun courses weren’t intended to be used for competitive events but they’ve brought to light a few issues which will need to be clarified when we DO start to use them – for the Night League, for example.

Here’s the result for the By the Way event.

The overall League Table is not that easy to read, unfortunately, as the original has been created in Word and so cannot be ordered by Total Points (unless someone can tell me different!) But these are the top WSX positions:

Alan – 1st; James – 2nd; Jolyon – 3rd; Jon Brooke – 5th; Jason – 6th; John Cook – 7th; Ian Wall – 10th.

In the women’s rankings, Lyra is 2nd; Nicci 5th; Tracy 7th; Sheila 8th and myself 9th.

The current MapRun event is Poole Town, and a few have already run it. I must reiterate that the map is less detailed than Gavin Clegg’s original map dut to technical issues, but this should not affect navigation or route choices.

Looking ahead; British Orienteering are trying to get some clarity about when we might be able to resume our sport and we are still hoping to hold a weekend of events instead of the Caddihoe Chase on the first weekend of October. Orienteering events are happening elsewhere in Europe  – the Medlocks are going to a multi-day event in the Juras in August  – so hopefully it won’t be too long before we are also allowed to hold proper events. Some of us are already looking ahead to next year and the Scottish 6 Days with accommodation already booked.

I am going to check whether we would be able to hold our AGM (usually late September) at the Queens Park venue as I’m hoping that by then people will feel more relaxed about gathering together, albeit at 1m + distance. I’ll let you all know in due course.

I hope you are all enjoying the summer (though doesn’t seem very summery at the moment!) and managing to get out and about.