SELOC Successes
The last in the club’s current series of Saturday events took place among the beautifully runnable woodlands and contours of Tandle Hill, with another good turnout even though the weather wasn’t quite as promising as previous events. Results are already on the website, so will just pick out wins for our juniors, Adam on Orange and Daniel on Yellow, Plus a 2nd place for (not so Junior!) Matt Driver on Light Green as worthy of particular note.
Further afield, Stephen Richards and John Nuttall continued to fly the flag for SELOC at the World Masters Championships in Latvia. Competition during the week moved away from the city and onto forested sand dunes near the coast – the pictures look idyllic. There’s a complex system of qualifying for the Long Distance Final at WMOC, based on results in a qualifying race and in the Middle Distance Final. Stephen qualified for the M65C in the Long Final where he finished in 56th spot, remarkably consistent with his 57th in M65C in the Middle race. John had a very good run in the Middle Final M70D class to finish 9th, sufficient to see him promoted to the Long Distance C Final where a good run saw him claim 54th place.
Midweek back in the UK, Peter Brooke was our only competitor at DEE’s Acton Park sprint event on Tuesday evening but he didn’t run in the 2nd race of the evening, so was treated as having retired.
Paul Turner went in search of West Midlands Urban League points at Walton Chasers’ 50th anniversary event in Tamworth where he took 5th place in Men SuperVeterans. With all the urban leagues he is contesting this year he is currently 3rd in the UK league, 2nd in both NW and Yorkshire ones, 4th in the East Midlands and 11th in the West Midlands, all in Men SuperVeterans class.
Club League
If anyone’s not noticed, the latest league table is now on the website with Matt Driver still leading the senior classes by a big margin and Theo Middleton the leading junior.
Upcoming Events
Your next chance to bag both SELOC club league and NW Urban League points comes this weekend at EPOC’s events, with a sprint on Saturday 20July in Mytholmroyd, then a full distance urban race in Hebden Bridge on Sunday 21st.
Before that, there’s the last of AIRE’s summer sprint series on Wednesday night at Weetwood on the north side of Leeds. The following night, DEE are back in action with a double sprint on two new areas in the suburbs of Liverpool.
Thereafter, things go a little quiet as much of the orienteering world, including a good number of SELOC members, will be in Scotland for the Scottish 6Days event over the week 28 July to 3 August. That should give everyone chance to gather their breath before the intriguing series of Race the Castles events in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, commencing 18 August and culminating in Scarborough with the White Rose event over August bank holiday weekend. Not all the venues still have castles, but they will still be worth visiting. The series includes an indoor race in Bradford Grammar School – if you think route choice in classic events is too easy, come and try some navigation in 3 dimensions as you pick a route up and down stairs to avoid Out of Bounds areas and one-way systems! Keep Tuesday 20 August clear if that sounds appealing.