Elisabeth’s Bit

Elisabeth Finch - Ladies’ Captain

Thank you for these reports. I look forward to many more in the next issue. In particular, can we have reports on

• the Saunders
• Junior Inter-Regionals
• JOK Chasing Sprint and Future Champions Cup Final
• South-East Relays
• Highland '99 / World Orienteering Championships
• Czech Five Days
• French Championships
• the Capricorn

(The editor has made some adjustments to this article but if anyone is upset by inaccuracies complain directly to Paul when he is next near the bar.)

The Annual British Championships Weekend of individual and club relay competitions took place in the Southern Lake District over the second weekend in May. It's a long way just for a weekend, but there was a big showing from SLOW; in fact several of us were doing it for the second time in two weeks, having been on the Kjos / Leaneys' training trip at the end of April. Such a big thing must have a report in the club magazine.

But who are you and why are you writing it, I hear some of you wonder; we've not seen your name here before? It's true I'm a new contributor. It's my third year in SLOW, which is much less than most but would have been a long while in my previous fast changing club LOK (the issue of the newsletter that announced me as a new member also said elsewhere I was the new chairman!) I started orienteering when I started getting injured too often in football about twenty years ago. This year I'm in M45 and enjoying its larger map scale. Also just at the moment I have a bit of time as I've finished working for IBM after 22 years, and am having a break from "IT". One of the things I need to do is throw out old orienteering stuff, but until then I can compare this year's SLOW veteran results with those of five years earlier, just in case there are any anoraks out there (every sport has a few.) Five years ago it was in Sussex, so folklore would expect SLOW to do worse by comparison. Southerners don't do so well in "proper" terrain you know, and besides which all the good folk from Scotland and the North will be present, as they wouldn't have been in Sussex.

My family are much better known however. I am married to Sarah Brown, who is a top W45 as well as the voice of the south-east answerphone and England veteran team manager. Together with a couple of M10s, Ralph (8) and Greg (6) we form the "Street/Brown" membership unit. My mother-in-law is Elizabeth Brown of Southdowns Orienteers, currently World Champion in W80. And perhaps most relevant to this article, my sister Sally is married to one of the planners of this year's British Individual, Ian Gilliver, lately of LOK, and now of fellow CompassSport Cup finalists Manchester and District (MDOC).

When I rang my brother-in-law with this article in mind, at 9pm Sunday night a week after the event, he was happily sorting out controls in their garage. The event was nearly cleared up! The courses had been a year in the planning. Preparing, putting out, checking, modifying (see below) and collecting the controls was a massive job. And there's all the travelling to and fro. It's a lot of effort involved and Ian has done several big ones now; fortunately he enjoys it very much. He mentioned a story from this particular event. Whilst staying in the area early on he was at a B&B which had a local map from 1780 displayed. He noticed that the area of the Championships, the Graythwaite Estate, was owned by a man with the same name as the current owner, who incidentally is a delightful and very helpful chap. It reinforces to me how, with land access such a big issue, orienteering must look after its relationships with landowners for the long term.

Graythwaite is a rough and heavily contoured forest. It's the sort of place where most of us find we can't go so quickly - 10 mins/km vs 8 mins/km for me - but the top folk don't slow down very much. It is a topnotch area with few paths and tracks but plenty of detail; it was first used last year for a World Cup race, as a result of which it has a first-class map. For several of the SLOW core it was a familiar location, if not familiar terrain, as they had organised the start for the World Cup. And with a lot of rain early on but not getting too cold it was good conditions.

The biggest scare curiously wasn't to do with parking so many cars in such a wet Spring but rather a lesson in how careful you have to be. The planners had built a control of the form intended for the event and it successfully survived the winter in Graham Nilsen's garden. Thus the design passed its test. Despite this Ian, whilst checking the controls just before the event, found a number fell off. So they had to visit every control and wire the numbers on on the morning of the event.

On Sunday the British Relays took place in several small areas of woodland around Cartmel racecourse linked by tracks and fields. Some confusion in the parking enabled large crowds to watch the first legs at close hand, and with runners in view of the spectators at several places on the course the running was very different to the previous day - under 7 mins/km on the previous measurements.

On Friday the elite classes of M21, W21, M20, W20 had a short race on a third area. This was a competition in its own right but was also to determine start times for the classic races the following day; the faster you do the later you go. With SLOW known for the strength of its veterans, it's nice to report four SLOW results from this: our Czech member Pavla Fialova 32nd in W21E, Caroline Catmur 17th in W20E, and Tom Fry and Ed Catmur both running up, securing very good positions of 8th and 10th in M20E.

On Saturday in the junior classes Tom and Ed returned to their own class of M18 with Tom in Championship and Ed in gold, and were supplanted in M20E by Simon Evans narrowly pipping Guy Barnett. David Catmur and Matthew and Helen Walter also did well, but Michael May didn't take up his entry with his family staying in the south, dad David scarcely able to walk let alone run. Pavla and Caroline picked up to 19th and a very fine 6th respectively.

All the longer courses (W45L and longer) started in a relatively clear part of the forest, but everyone got the authentic rough stuff late on. With W55 almost entirely in this, our best-known Norwegian Annemarie Kjos was 4th. At the other end of the course lengths Vikki Robb was 39th on W21L and Susan Bright 10th on W21S. There were cracking runs from Malcolm Fisher 3rd and Tim Rogers 11th on M21L. Behind them were Jon O'Donnell 31st and David Finch 64th with Chris Owen retiring, perhaps still suffering from the training weekend back to back with business trips to the USA. Andrew Leaney, who as planner of the training had done much to wear us all out, was still nursing his ankle from an accident on the way to control one in the JK relay, and so stepped gently down into M21S coming 22nd.

W35L saw good packing from Karen Jones, Heather Walton and Madeleine Watson, finishing within five places of each other – excellent team building which was capitalised on the following day coming 3rd running as a team in the W35 relay. Kathy Haynes got her name top of the W40 results, by retiring early on, and taking increasingly longer were Diane Leakey (4th), Anne Leaney (23rd), Chris Robinson (26th) and Editor Ginny. Folklore was right as Diane was the champion five years ago. So too for Teresa Turner, 44th in W50L vs 25th five years earlier.

M35L saw Captain Peter 52nd and my erstwhile IBM colleague Jerry Watson was 23rd on M35S. Largest SLOW turnout was in M40 with Andy Jones (22nd) beating home Trevor Jones, Timo Teinila, Peter Haynes, Mal Lyon, Paul Canham and Michael Walter. This large turnout created a familiar problem in relay selection for the captain, which I gather he may be commenting on elsewhere. Suffice to say that Trevor, whose selection as last leg for the first team is automatic, for the second year running found his first task was to overtake the SLOW second team. The teams finished a useful 5th and 6th. The M35 team of Jerry, Peter and Paul Canham was 10th, with a particularly fine run from Jerry on first leg making the most of his speed despite a contact lens slipping out of place.

In M45L a fine run and from an early start in the worst of the rain too by Charlie Turner brought him 14th, one place behind Alan Leakey. Alan was running later and might have been expected to stay drier but with a vigour equalling that which got him a spectacular headwound in the international in Kent in March he managed a full length "5.9" dive into marsh. Map reading must have been a bit difficult for a time after that. Behind them but also in Championship standard were Andy Robinson 25th and Paul Street 35th, and Richard Catmur 108th. Andy and Charlie improved on five years before, Alan and Paul slipped. The relay team of Charlie, Andy and Alan were 2nd, a few minutes down on their Yorkshire rivals "AIREbrush" and a few seconds ahead of rival southern teams. M50L saw Tom Lillicrap 6th gaining one place from 5 years ago, Jim Mallinson 22nd, up nine places, and Chris Fry 81st.

And finally to the coincidental near misses. Mike Murray was 2nd in M55L, 5 seconds down on local (West Cumberland) Mike Pearson. Sarah Brown was 2nd in W45L, 71 seconds down on local (Lakeland) Beryl Offley. These margins, especially Mike's, are tiny in such a rough area - the proverbial which side of the fallen tree. Coincidentally both runners had been second five years ago to the same rivals, but had narrowed the gap. Perhaps there are limits to the folklore after all, or perhaps being in SLOW helps keep you young?

But the weekend didn't end without some wins. Sarah, with Chris and Diane in the W40 relay, and Mike, with Tom and Jim in the M50 relay, gained first places. In W40 this was a comfortable margin, and any member of the SLOW second team who came in 4th overall, Teresa, Anne and Kathy could have replaced the corresponding runner in the 1st team and SLOW would still have won. The team was running the same course at the same time as the W35 teams and had they entered that they would have won. In M50 however it was far from comfortable. Mike, running the last leg, reached the spectator control about five minutes from the finish level with Harlequins runner, M50 individual winner and England selector Andy Hemsted, and outran him by 10 seconds to the finish. No doubt this is an excellent way to get yourself noticed, well done Mike. I wonder how much the selectors believe in folklore?

Being the Wednesday before the British, this "fun" event was entered by just the two SLOW teams, though in the event the ladies ran two out of three legs due to injury to Madeleine. Various SLOW members also took part in other teams including Jeremy Denny and Alistair Irvine, and Kate Thomas came along to give us some support - and we needed it. Men were in teams of 4, women in teams of 3 and each leg simply had to run a 2.9 circuit in Richmond Park. Now the reason for the "fun" being in inverted commas is that although the entry was open to all, almost everybody else either had an athletics club shirt on or looked quite fast. We sent Dick Clark off first and he came in half-way down the field in somewhat under 20 minutes. Setting out on the second leg I was soon feeling very tired, reassuring myself with "only people with club vests have overtaken me so I must be doing alright" and coming in at 21.55. Jenny Thomas had started for the women's team, handing over to Vicky Robb. As Jenny came in to finish, she was lapped by the second leg of the leading men's team. Were we out of our depth slightly, I wondered. "Oh, don't worry about that, that was Gary Staines," said Andy, and I replied, "But he's an ex-Olympic athlete, isn't he?" and Andy responded with "Yes, that's right ... Sonia O'Sullivan's just gone out." OK, I had the measure of what we'd let ourselves in for now. Chris Owen was third leg in a time of about 20 minutes and Andy just below that. The judges looked back along the course, wondering if there was another team to come - there wasn't. Despite the tone of this report, I did enjoy it and may yet go back, though I suspect I was the slowest man there.

This relay was intended as a fun event but it attracted an excellent posse of 5 teams from SLOW. The basic relay format was that there were a total of 27 controls, of which controls 1-9 had to be visited by every member of the four-person team and each of the other 18 by any one member of the team, the first complete team finishing being declared the winner. The tricky bit was thus to determine who should visit which additional control. Three members finishing 20 minutes ahead of the fourth would probably be a disadvantage. Andy Robbo, our team captain, came up with a complicated formula along the lines of the following.

1. Everybody has to visit 9 controls, implying 4 * 9 = 36 visits.
2. Each of the other controls has to be visited once = 18 visits.
3. Divide the number of visits according to the respective abilities of the team.

This worked out as 1 or 2 additional visits for Dick Clark and myself and 7 or 8 additional visits for Timo Teinila and Andy. The race was a mass start and only once the whistle went could you see the map. Cometh the whistle and I'm looking dazy eyed at the course but Andy soon had a handle on a plan. I was duly despatched to controls 10 and 21, while Dick was assigned 17 and 23 - see map. [On the front cover.] Andy took all other controls north of the main road and Timo all those to the south. This turned out pretty optimal for our team but I will leave what we could have done better as exercise for the reader.

I started a little ahead of most people, which helped quite a lot as I progressed round the southern spine as I had plenty of people telegraphing the route. Most disappeared off to controls not on the spine and I found myself hanging on for dear life to Alan Leakey and then Andy as Alan disappeared completely. Crossing the bridge I reckoned that they were the only people definitely ahead. I then embarked on the dog leg to 21 and 10 and saw only Alan running back. So long as I could finish before him, on the basis that he was bound to have to visit additional controls, then my part in the team result would be assured, which gave me plenty of incentive to keep going despite all the gasping for breath. I sighted Dick ahead of me approaching control 6 and Andy appeared at control 8. Three in, Timo to go and he duly appeared a few minutes later to give us a win - the first team event I have ever won - and probably the last!

Three badge events, all within 40 minutes of the event centre and camp site at Ludlow School: Day 1, Shobdon; Day 2, Bury Ditches, and Day 3: Titterstone Clee Hill. Shobdon, I noticed with alarm, is a Forestry Experimental Research Station. What weird trees would we encounter here? In fact, nothing to worry about from the trees, but the stinging nettles were awesome, and I still have thorns under my skin! Most memorable though was the thunder. We arrived to hazy sunshine, but finished in torrential rain, with the lightning directly overhead. (I should have run faster!) We learned that you can dry your O kit in about half an hour if you turn on the air conditioning in the car with the heating set to maximum. (However, it's not very good for the environment, and the smell is terrible!) Day 2 was memorable for a long steep climb to the start. The weather threatened, but never actually produced, a downpour. Both Days 1 and 2 suffered from brashings, brambles and nettles. What a contrast with Day 3! Completely open moorland, with close-cropped grass and intricate contour features resulting from mineral extraction. We parked in and around the quarry almost at the summit, and had the eerie sight above us (and next to us, at the red start) of radar dishes, domes and tracking aerials. A good day, culminating in the prize-giving (three winners for SLOW): Edward Catmur (M18A), Chris Fry (M50S) and Mike Murray (M55L). The trophies were delightful wooden pictures with the SinS springy control symbol (hand-made by Noël Gould).

On Saturday evening there was a quiz, in which members of SLOW came 2nd and 4th, and on Sunday evening a talk by Göran Andersson, BOF's Performance Director. Göran spoke about the 'Go for Gold' campaign, to make the British orienteering squad into the best in the world. He outlined the benefits to the ordinary orienteer of having élite athletes: all the major technical improvements in orienteering have resulted from demand by the élites (coloured maps, the 1:10,000 and 1:15,000 map scales, thumb compasses, electronic punching). Young orienteers benefit also from having élites that they can emulate. He circulated a couple of Swedish O maps ('rather different from what you have run on today', he commented), to explain why so many top British orienteers found it necessary to move to Scandinavia to improve their own standard. He talked about how we, the ordinary orienteers, could improve our own performance (other than by being born Swedish, of course): he advised us to spend time after a competition in analysing what went WELL, not what went wrong. He demonstrated the GB Squad's mascot, who is Tigger, because Tigger is always the best at anything. We should have asked if we could buy the Tigger T-shirts! There was a discussion session, in which the perennial question of how to attract, and keep, talented juniors was raised. This was a valuable evening, and we were very lucky to have Göran there to talk to us.

So a good weekend overall: Ludlow School makes a good event centre, with ample space for camping, and use of toilets, showers and cafeteria; the swimming pool of the South Shropshire Leisure Centre, on the same site, was a great attraction. But I think we deserved better weather!