JK 2015Lake District, 3 - 6 April 2015
A fantastic long weekend of orienteering enjoyed by plenty of ESOC members who made the journey to the Lake District.
Many ESOC members ventured to the South Lakes over the Easter weekend to compete at the JK International Orienteering Festival. This is a major event in the UK orienteering calendar, which attracts competitors from all over the orienteering world. This year there were even more international orienteers than usual, due to the World Orienteering Championships being held in Scotland later this year. Many countries sent teams of athletes to help them familiarise themselves with British terrain. This made the event even more exciting than usual. ESOC members found themselves competing alongside some very famous names. This is thrilling for everyone, but especially for the younger orienteers who got a flavour of the skill level they can aspire to.
All in all a great weekend. Good weather for most of the weekend, a good opportunity to meet up with other ESOC members in the club tent, great orienteering for everyone and much success for ESOC members. What more could we ask for?
The event was held over 4 days:
Fri 3 April - Day 1: Sprint race at Lancaster University
Sat 4 April - Day 2: Individual Race (Forest + open fell) at Ulpha Park & Barrow Fell
Sun 5 April - Day 3: Individual Race (Forest + open fell) at Bigland
Mon 6 April - Day 4: Relays at Graythwaite (Forest)
The Day 1 sprint race was a standalone race, and the times for Day 2 and Day 3 were combined to give a competitor's overall position in the JK Championship. The relays on Day 4 at Graythwaite were mainly for age class club teams, though the ad hoc race had a multitude of different combinations of ages and skill levels.
The stand out result for me was Rachel Brown, who was JK Champion in the W12A class, with a winning margin of 5mins 42secs! To add to that, she also had a second place in the Sprint on the Friday.
Another excellent result was in the Woman’s Trophy relay race. Our star team of Claire Ward, Bex Harding and Helen Bridle finished 3rd in this extremely competitive class.
All our elite woman also had great individual results finishing 3rd, 5th and 6th Brit respectively, with Rona Lindsay (running for EUOC) finishing 11th Brit.
The JK is not all about elite orienteering though. There is great competition for every competitor in their class.
Club Members achieving a top ten result at the JK:
Rachel Brown (2nd W12 Sprint, 1st W12A)
Gillian Martin (7th W35 Sprint, 10th W35)
Helena Nolan (9th W45 Sprint)
Eleanor Pyrah (3rd W70 Sprint, 4th W70L)
Claire Ward (10th W21E)
Fran Daley (8th W40L)
Judith Bell (9th W45S)
Rachel Fawthrop (5th W50S)
Ray Ward (4th M40 Sprint)
Roger Scrutton (6th M65 Sprint)
Dave Kershaw (9th M65 Sprint)
Ian Pyrah (4th M70 Sprint)
Ron Nolan (9th M45S)
Bill Stevenson (2nd M65S)
Podium Positions in Relays
3rd Woman’s Trophy: Claire Ward, Bex Harding, Helen Bridle
3rd W120+: Jo Stevenson, Helena Nolan, Heather Thomson
2nd Mixed Ad Hoc: Craig Nolan, Paul Clatworthy, Andrew Dalgleish
Well done to all those mentioned above, and also to all the other ESOC members who had great results but didn't make the top ten. Some classes had over 100 competitors, and very many had over 75 competitors, so achieving the top half was fantastic.
Full results are here, and other details about the weekend can be found on the JK 2015 website.
There's a selection of photos in the following albums of the ESOC Google Album Archive:
Day 1 (Sprint)
Day 2 (Ulpha Park & Barrow Fell)
Day 3 (Bigland)
Day 4 (Relays)
There are links to other photos on the JK 2015 website photo page.
The JK Sprint and the two Individual races were the 5th, 6th and 7th events in the 2015 UK Orienteering League.
- Helena Nolan, Club Captain
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