Chairman’s Chat – November 14th 2017

Posted on Tue, 14th November 2017 by Julie Astin
Club News

Only one set of results has come through for the events over the past 5 days (how impatient we get these days – remember when we had to wait two or three weeks for the results to come through the post?!)

But the results for the Devon Galoppen on Haytor last Sunday were available that evening. And what a result for the Medlock family again! Rebecca was the star this time, winning on the Short Green course, beating some tough opposition in the process. A brilliant result. Lyra came 2nd on Orange – only beaten by an 18-year old! Esk came 1st on White (albeit she was the only competitor!) but her dad, Jolyon, slipped from 6th to 16th place on the last control on the Blue course.

Although the results aren’t in yet, the SOC Night League event over at Eastney, near Portsmouth, on Thursday evening was ‘interesting’. First of all the traffic was horrendous getting there and many people started after the official closing time for starts. Many thanks for Robin Smith et al for allowing this. The map was a double-sided A3 with NO overlap – which certainly caused me some problems as I couldn’t make out where my last control was situated in relation to the other side of the map. I faffed around for what seemed like ages trying to sort myself out. As usual, my strategy wasn’t brilliant, meaning that I had to go hell-for-leather to get to the Finish on time – then mistook where it was and hence overran the 60 minutes by 1 second – so losing 10 points!

On Sunday, I went with the Sayers to Bucklebury Common, near Newbury, for a BKO event. It was a glorious, though cold, day and I had a pretty fair run apart from trying to find a control on a large earth-bank overgrown with gorse. This was made more difficult by the fact that the control description didn’t indicate which side of the bank it was. That’s my excuse anyway…. Due to problems with some of the controls, apparently (EMIT – grrr!) they haven’t been able to produce any results yet.

And yesterday evening many of us went to the WIM Night League event on Avon Heath – a ‘real’ night event with no streetlamps! It was great fun, although again my strategy wasn’t brilliant. And, unlike urban night events, it was easy to make mistakes and miss features on the ground. I even saw John Cook make a mistake!

I must make one correction to last week’s ‘Chat’ and that is Peter Suba was also a Top Ten result, coming 9th on M40L at the November Classic.

Also, people have asked for the full listing for the Club Championships, and they are as follows:

Ladies Championship

Handicap Adjusted Minutes/K
1stLyra Medlock4.926
2ndJulie Astin8.866
3rdNicola Brooke9.079
4thSarah Houlder13.355

Mens Championship

1stJohn Cook5.929
2ndPeter Suba6.836
3rdTim Houlder7.478
4thJohn Brooke7.534
5thRoger Crickmore7.545
6thJason Falconer7.703
7thGraham Whiffen8.021
8thRob Hick8.171
9thArthur Brooke9.456
10thAlan Blanchflower9.539
11thBill Brown10.174
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Orienteering Club