SELOC Successes
A good turnout on yet another sunny day at SELOC’s Saturday Series event at Queen’s Park in Heywood, results are available on the website so I won’t go into them here. But there was plenty more going on elsewhere too.
Starting with the most prestigious event of the week, the World Masters Championships got underway in Latvia. Stephen Richards and John Nuttall are both attending and ran in the Sprint Qualifying races on Saturday, then the Final on Sunday. After a draining experience just getting there, Stephen had a steady run to qualify for the C Final in M65 where he finished 59th. John was in the biggest class of them all, M70 with 5 Final races, so found himself in the D Final where a problem at control 5 left him placed 10th after being level with the winner at control 4. However, both Stephen and John’s courses were voided, along with many others, after the organisers had problems with a gate that was locked when it should have been open. Just goes to show it can happen at even the biggest races, but presumably there’s a large pile of WMOC Sprint medals somewhere that no-one knows what to do with. There’s an amusing report from Stephen in the news page.
Earlier in the week the final race in SROC’s summer sprint series took place in the excellent setting of Lancaster University. Ed Mellor, Paul Turner and Kev Latham all ran well though none had enough races to make a big impact on the overall series result, with Kev our best placed at 4th in Veteran Men’s class. I’m told Mark Sammon might have surpassed that if he’d remembered this race was on! Then on Thursday night, Michael Hood was our only representative among the steep slopes and bracken at MDOC’s Alderley Edge event, taking 2nd place on the Short Green course.
Paul Turner was back out for a busy weekend, running in AIRE’s Baildon urban race on Saturday (3rd place in Men’s SuperVets) before heading back to Heywood to help with control collection at Queen’s Park. Then on Sunday it was up to Northallerton to gather more UK Urban League points from 4th place at CLOK’s event and bag a few new permanent courses afterwards into the bargain.
Finally, though not strictly an orienteering event, can’t ignore a number of good SELOC results from the Saunders Lakeland Mountain Marathon over the weekend. Pride of place must go to Mark and Robert Seddon for their win in the Carrock Fell class. But most of our members favoured the score format in the Fairfield class where Matt Driver claimed 3rd spot and Josie Greenhalgh was the leading Female Vet. On the same course but running as pairs it was the team of Albert Sunter, running with Tony Marlow of SROC, who took 2nd Vets spot while in the Mixed Vets category Mark Sammon/Michele Sunter were 6th and Kev Latham/Sian Calow 13th .
Upcoming Events
We have the last in SELOC’s current Saturday Series at Tandle Hill Country Park, Oldham, on Saturday, 13 July. More details on the website, but should be excellent fun in largely runnable woodland with contours.
Into the following week, DEE stage the next in their summer series on Tuesday 9 July, near Wrexham. Then on Wednesday, it could be a choice between another in LOC’s series of middle distance races, this time up on the top of the Kirkstone Pass, MDOC’s next Countryside Score event near New Mills or an AIRE sprint near Leeds. Come the weekend, NN have an urban race in the attractive Yorkshire town of Richmond on Sunday 14 July.
Your next chance to bag both SELOC club league and NW Urban League points comes the weekend after that, at EPOC’s urban races in Mytholmroyd (Saturday 20July) and Hebden Bridge (Sunday 21st). Pre-entries close this coming Sunday, 14 July.