JK 2014South Wales, 18 - 21 April
There were good performances from ESOC, with some podium places, at the Jan Kjellström Festival of Orienteering in South Wales.
In contrast to last year in SE England, it was warmer and even sunny at times in South Wales this year. With the prospect of more interesting orienteering, 43 members of ESOC attended this year’s JK Festival.
Friday saw the JK Sprint, at the University of Swansea. The sun shone brightly on the campus, overlooking the beach with Mumbles Head in the distance. The arena was in the centre and used a lovely grassy area, with the start and finish nearby. This year’s courses were quite straightforward in the main, but there were trickier legs in the buildings of the university. Most of the terrain was on grass or paved areas, with a couple of boggy patches in the grounds.
There were some excellent ESOC results – star of the show was Eleanor Pyrah, who won the W70 class.
Other ESOC runners who were in the top half of their class:
M14 (68 competitors) – Ben Brown 31st
M20E (40) – Andrew Lindsay 12th
M35 (30) – Ray Ward 5th
M40 (54) – Chris Lewis 4th
M45 (139) – Mark Wood 28th, Terry Johnstone 45th
M50 (151) – Keith Brown 60th
M55 (125) – Crawford Lindsay 42nd
M60 (87) – Les Dalgleish 41st, Dave Kershaw 45th
M65 (91) – Roger Scrutton 16th, Alastair Lessells 40th=
M70 (43) – Ian Pyrah 8th
W12 (43) – Rachel Brown 9th
W14 (45) – Kerry Wood 10th
W20E (25) – Rona Lindsay 7th
W21E (61) – Jo Stevenson 23rd
W45 (113) – Helena Nolan 5th
W55 (75) – Sally Lindsay 14th
W60 (45) – Janice Nisbet 4th, Margaret Dalgleish 8th, Mary Williams 16th
W65 (55) – Fiona Findlay 17th=, Katy Lessells 23rd
Saturday and Sunday’s individual races are combined for the JK Individual competition. The Elite classes (M/W18 E, M/W20E, and M/W21E) have a middle race followed by a long race, and there are two long races for everyone else.
Day 2 was at Merthyr Common, near the Heads of the Valleys road north of Tredegar. It was bright and breezy, but cooler than the previous day. The terrain was largely dry and firm underfoot, on open moorland with many sinkholes and pits, plus large areas of broken rock. It was quite hilly, with a lot of ascent on all courses, but this did not prevent some very fast runs. Many people found the orienteering tricky and it was necessary to maintain contact with the map or large mistakes ensued. The race for the W21E and M21E was a World Ranking Event; Claire Ward had a superb run, winning W21E by nearly a minute.
Day 3 used the same arena, but the race was to the east of the access road, on Mynydd Llangynidr. This is similar in many ways to Merthyr Common, but has less rocky areas and is slightly vaguer so it’s possibly more difficult to relocate if contact is lost with the map. With less rock it is an area that favours strong runners. Early starters had to run in dry and misty conditions, but as the morning progressed the cloud lifted. However by 13:00 the forecast rain arrived with a bang and lightning was seen. Later there was some heavy rain, but luckily it was only showery until most people had finished their runs. Best ESOC results came from Claire Ward, who won again to take another JK W21 Elite title, and Janice Nisbet, who won W60 that day to finish 3rd overall.
Other ESOC runners who were in the top half of their class overall:
M20E (35 competitors) – Craig Nolan 6th, Andrew Lindsay 9th
M21S (58) – Andrew Dalgleish 6th
M35L (31) – Ray Ward 15th
M40L (50) – Chris Lewis 9th
M50S (60) – Keith Brown 20th
M55L (120) – Crawford Lindsay 30th
M65L (106) – Roger Scrutton 19th, Alastair Lessells 39th
M65S (35) – Bill Stevenson 6th
M75L (29) – Jim Clark 4th
W12A (39) – Rachel Brown 12th
W45L (87) – Helena Nolan 10th
W45S (58) – Judy Bell 18th
W55L (74) – Sally Lindsay 32nd
W65S (19) – Maureen Brown 8th
W70L (33) – Eleanor Pyrah 5th, Janet Clark 11th
Day 4 saw the JK Relays, at Pwll Du, near Blaenavon, a very complex area of old spoil heaps. From the assembly area, there was a good view of the run-in, and the spectator control that was visited by most courses,
ESOC had 11 teams, in classes C, D, G, J and P. Our best team was ESOC Capercaillies (Craig Nolan, Chris Lewis and Andrew Lindsay), who came second in Men’s Short, 32 seconds behind the winners. ESOC Dotterels (Jo Stevenson, Helena Nolan and Heather Thomson) came 5th in the Women’s Short class. Other teams in the top half of their class were the two Ultraveteran (M/W 210+) teams. The Oystercatchers (Sally Lindsay, Eleanor Pyrah and Ian Pyrah) narrowly held off the Ospreys (Mary Williams, Anne Stevenson and Janice Nisbet) finishing in 11th and 12th places respectively. Our highest-placed Ad Hoc team was the Pipits (Kerry Wood, Rachel Kirkland and Mark Wood), who came 21st in a very large class.
Other teams fared less well, but nobody mispunched and the weather was excellent.
Full results are here and other details about the weekend can be found on the JK2014 website.
There are links to photos from the events on the JK 2014 website photo page.
The JK will be in classic Lake District terrain next year, from 3 to 6 April 2015. For more information, see the JK 2015 website.
Crawford Lindsay
Club Captain
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