Club Champs 2024
On Sunday 15th December, SLOW members congregated for some festive fun in Reigate Priory Park to run in our 2024 Club Championships. Thanks a lot to Mole Valley Orienteering Club for letting us use their event (and for the mulled wine + mince pies at the finish).
Mole Valley Routegadget for the Race
Results for the event can be found at the Mole Valley MCFRS website.
Thanks to Pete for photos.
The excellent map was to 1:5000, with 5m contours. In the words of the one SLOW champion “it’s twice as hilly as it looks.”
A strong contingent of 38 SLOW members made it out to the small town of Reigate in Surrey. The walk to assembly was a little surreal with the sight of hundreds of Santas racing around the park and riding the fairground rides. But eventually we found a small tent for the 2nd biggest (but most important) event in the park — the SLOW club champs.
It was a dry winter day, slightly chilly but some sun peaking through the clouds — as good as one can hope for mid-December in the UK. Courses included a combination of parkland and lovely runnable sloped woodlands with great visibility, though a considerable amount of climb (around 5% of distance on my course – probably on the edge of planning guidelines). I’m told the longer Blue and Brown courses had the additional challenge of Santa dodging.
Club President Abi Weeds led by example to complete the double, not only winning the SLOW Women’s open but also the Green course overall to become the South East Vets Champion.
There was some tough competition on the Men’s open, but Tom Davies (reigning champion from 2022) had an impressive 3 minute win margin on Blue, also winning the Men’s SE Vets.
Peter Huzan enjoyed celebrating his retirement from Club Captaincy by winning the Men’s Supervets category, with Andy Jones only 30s behind.
Teresa Turner prevailed on the short green to be the quickest SLOW Women’s Supervet (W60+).
In Junior Men, Timofey was speedy round the Brown (and got the fastest run-in time of all SLOW members) but the pressure got to him and unfortunately he mispunched close to the end. On Yellow, Emma Davies and Polly Roper both made their Club Champs debut. Congratulations to Emma on winning in 28:42.
Thanks to all that came, I hope you enjoyed yourselves! Special thanks to all that stayed for the prize giving!
Courses at this regional event were hosting South-East “Veteran” (40+) and Super-Veteran” (60+) championships
The South-East Super Veteran Champions are Ian Ditchfield (Mole Valley) and Jill Blount (Southdowns).
Congratulations to South-East Veteran Champions Tom Davies and Abi Weeds.
