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Scottish Champs Weekend
A great weekend up north, with some good results for Interlopers ... photos to follow
What a great weekend! INVOC and Moravian put on an excellent set of events for the Scottish Championships last weekend, with the individual long distance championships hosted by INVOC on Saturday near Inverness followed by Sunday's relays at Roseisle hosted by MAROC.
Long Distance Championships
The Long Distance Championships were at Craig Leach, just west of Inverness. Courses started on Craig Leach, a 2.5km walk from the assembly area with enough climb to get everyone warmed up before their start on a lovely warm day. Competitors were straight into the forest, through a carpet of heather and blaeberry, in generally very runnable woods before heading north and east towards Dunain Hill. Longer courses took in the steeper southern side of this hill, with some mountain bike trails, not all mapped, and boulder detail. From the remote finish it was a shor(er) walk back to the assembly area, possibly for cake from the ScotJOS stall or a visit to the adjacent Farm Ness, llamas and all.
(Waiting to Start, and In the Woods - Lorna Eades)
Some great results from Interlopers ('C' for championship time, 'G' / 'S' / 'B' for bronze, bold for medals, those in top half of results shown), with Lucy Ward as our sole Champion this year:
- W14A: Lucy Ward 1st (C)
- W21S: Lindsay Robertson 3rd (S)
- W45L: Claire Ward 3rd (C)
- W50L: Mary Ross 4th (C), Heather Hartman 8th (C)
- W55S: Lorna Eades 2nd (B)
- W60L: Ann Haley 3rd (C)
- M18E: Laurence Ward 3rd (C)
- M21E: Luke Fisher 2nd (C), Eddie Narbett 8th (C)
- M45L: Ray Ward 4th (G)
- M50S: Graeme Ross 2nd (S)
- M55L: Robin Galloway 2nd (C)
(Lucy Ward W14A Champion, and Laurence Ward, M18E 3rd - Lorna Eades)
Relay Championships
After the glorious sunny weather on Saturday, Sunday had a lot to live up to. Roseisle is a fantastic area for orienteering, and the courses offered a great technical challenge, though I think most were grateful to Colin Eades for his efforts as controller to stop the planner from making the courses rather longer than the recommended distance. Assembly was at the Burghead playing field, which as ever provided a great arena for both mass start and hotly-contested (well, in some cases) finish. There was some heavy rain as the faster second leg runners returned, but this had eased off by the time of prize giving.
One of the great features of the Scottish Relays is the age-handicap method for defining the relay classes. This means that pretty much anyone can run with anyone else competitively, and you don't have to find 2 others of roughly the same age and gender. Just don't ask me to explain how the handicaps are worked out! It also means that you cannot tell if anyone ahead of you in the run-in is on your course or not - fortunately Ray remembered this as he passed the third leg runner from 'Knock Your BASOCs Off' (we really need to get more creative on our team names to take third place by a nose (1 second) in the 14+ category!
(1st Leg Start - Katherine Ivory; Age-class 14+ podium - Mary Williams)
More excellent results from our Interlopers teams:
- Open: Interlopers N 4th by 7s (Eddie Narbett, Luke Fisher, Douglas Tullie)
- Women's Open: Interlopers W 3rd (Rebecca Harding, Roanne Lilley, Louise Adams)
- Age-class 14+: Interlopers NW 3rd (William Ivory, Katherine Ivory, Ray Ward)
- Age-class 20+: Interlopers SW 2nd (Graham McIntyre, Ann Haley, Claire Ward)
Roll on 2025, when the East Area hosts the Championships. Interlopers are organising the Individual Championships at Barrybuddon, along the coast from Dundee ... see you there!
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