24th BOX HILL FELL
RACE 22 January 2005 Race report
This year’s race
saw the youngest ever winner. Dean Lacy made his debut last year
taking 2nd place at the tender age of 19. Now with a
year’s more experience he improved by a minute to take the
title. The 11 time champion Chris Beecham was 21 when he won for
the first time; so Dean I don’t know what your plans are for
the next 11 years, but….
Dean could actually
have gone faster as he was saving himself for the next
week’s Southern Champs; that’s a fixtures blight likely
to affect us at Box Hill for years to come. Otherwise Dean could
have made the all-time top 10. He pulled away from and broke up
the lead group of 4 in the last 2 miles. Phil Sheard travelled
from the far reaches of Pudsey & Bramley to take 2nd
and last year’s 3rd and 4th swapped
places with Shaun Whelan in 3rd
retaining the veteran’s title but watch out Paul as Phil
Sheard says he is now 39!
A previous veteran
winner, Kevin Harding, was 2nd vet and first time vet
Mark Forrest 3rd keeping another former vet winner
John Lowden out of the prizes. Gary Rayner was first supervet and
Geoff Burrow first M60.
The ladies race had the
highest class field for over a decade and all time top 10
received a major re-write. Top GB international orienteer (and
SLOW member) Heather Monro took the win in an excellent 57.35,
the fourth best ever. She even took a map with her to check
we’d put the flags in the right places. Chasing her home was
newcomer Leah Walland; her 58.03 is now 5th best ever.
In 3rd place was 2001 winner Sarah Rollins and she ran
her best ever time to just make the all time top 10.
All that makes you feel
rather sorry for Tracey Apps. Tracey has won for the last two
years. Not only did she lose her title and get pushed out of the
prizes but her excellent time from last year is no longer in the
top 10. It was still a fine run for 4th place. To
complete the classy field Alice Bedwell’s time (64.52) as
first vet makes me wonder what the fastest ever in that class
was.
In the team
classification Springfield Striders retained the title dominating
the other clubs in both quality and quantity. Do they have a
cunning plan to eliminate the opposition by taking a large
proportion of the entries – 25 of them run. They were
however chased hard by Frontrunners who had a more select
representation.
TEAM RESULTS
1
2 Frontrunners
69
8 Bishops Stortford RC
293
3
4 Tring R C
130
10
5 SLOW
207
11 Dorking &
6
Running numbers seemed
to sneak in just under the limit again, which means we’ll be
continuing our policy of hiking up the entry fee 2 weeks before
race day. We started turning people away over a week before the
race.
Thanks go again to all
the usual suspects. The National Trust for permission to
run on the hills. Sandra Dunlop and all those at Friends
Provident for use of the car park and social club. And of
course the many helpers from SLOW - Dick (entries, registration,
and computer), Mike M (signs and course marking), Chris (notices
and registration), Richard, Ginny and Mike E (finish), Keira
(course sweeper), Kay, Jeremy, Don and Charlie (road crossings).
Finally a plug for
SLOW’s promotions over the next few months. There is a
series of Trail Challenge Races (a sort of cross-country cum
orienteering hybrid) in the spring :
1) Sat 19th
March (p.m.)
2) Sun 3rd April (a.m.)
Box Hill – don’t you just love all that climb. A Mole
Valley OC promotion.
3) Sun 1st May
(lunchtime) Peaslake – run in parallel with the orienteering
World Cup race that day.
On Monday 2nd
May the orienteering World Cup has its sprint race in
And the Surrey Hill
races are on Monday 30th May. These are now billed as
Trail Challenge races but with the helpful difference that you
can recce the course months in advance.
See the SLOW website www.sloweb.org.uk for any of these.
And next year is the
silver jubilee race. We must do something special
Andy Robinson