Scottish Inter Club Relays

On Sunday Clyde hosted the annual Scottish Inter Club Relays (formerly the ‘11 person relay’). ESOC just about managed 2 teams, one 8 person and one 11 person and it was a thoroughly enjoyable day. Our 11 person team was competitive and although we always thought we struggle against the consistency of FVO we knew we had a shout for 2nd place. Our 8 person team was non competitive as we are a big club (make it an 8 person team only competition please SOA!) and we had planned to fill it with runners from other clubs but on arrival they had pretty much sorted themselves out so we decided to have a few people from the 11 person team run again on the 8 (myself, Heather and Craig)

There were only 14 teams starting (in both competitions) so the start pen had an empty feeling about it, but most of the folk in there were good orienteers so keeping a cool head was the most important! You can watch the start of the race here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSaQobQz5-Q Both Dave and I had good runs to set the teams off in good stead, Dave was pleased to have a clean run having not orienteered for 3 years!

After the first leg it became very difficult to follow the race, and I can’t even piece it together easily afterwards as there aren’t any individual results up, just routegadget! Our 11 person team came 3rd (of 5) only 2:11 down on Clyde, 10 of us had done very well to set Mike out in 2nd place (behind FVO, surprise surprise!) but there was little chance of him hanging on to a ~4min lead over Dave Robertson, who stormed round the longer of the two Tartan courses (by 200m) faster than anyone else. It would be interesting to see times laid out in the grid we’ve come to know and love for the 11 person.

In the 8 person competition our team did very well. It was probably helped a bit by those of us who had run already as the courses were similar (and for Heather, exactly the same!) but we managed to have the fastest, though non competitive, time on the 8 person relay. It would have been very interesting to see an 8 person only competition.

Overall results are on the Clyde Website.

Thank you to everyone who came, hope you all enjoyed it!