Scottish Sprint Championships 2013Aberdeen, 6 April 2013
The Scottish Sprint Championships was organised this year by GRAMP, in an interesting 2 race format, and there were several ESOC members amongst the winners.
This year's Scottish Sprint event was in 2 halves, with the prologue at Seaton Park and Hillhead halls of residence, and the chase in Old Aberdeen around King’s Campus. There was a twist in that it was a reverse chasing sprint, with each competitor’s start time worked out by subtracting their prologue time from 2pm. This meant that the slowest started first, and the fastest caught them up, leading to a lot of people finishing within a very short time, and some crowds at controls.
There was a single event centre for both races, at St Peter’s RC Primary School which lay between the two areas. Registration and download were indoors and there were refreshments available. The indoor space was very welcome for socialising between the races, as it was a cold day, though it was dry and bright.
The prologue started in parkland, with some easy controls on the flat, then a steep bank before reaching the halls of residence, where there were complex buildings and route choice decisions, returning to the park for the finish.
The chase was fast and furious from the beginning, with competitors all lining up in order and starting by the second; it must have been an interesting spectacle for anyone who happened to be passing by. There was a mixture of old and new buildings, narrow alleyways and some changes of level, again giving plenty of route choice, with some close results and some big mistakes.
ESOC had 8 class winners (some classes were very small):
Rachel Brown, W10
Rona Lindsay, W20
Heather Thomson, W35
Sally Lindsay, W55
Margaret Dalgleish, W60
Janet Clark, W70
Andrew Lindsay, M20
Jim Clark, M75
Other ESOC members who were in the top half of the results for their age class were:
M12 (6 competitors) – Ben Brown 3rd
M21 (15) – Andrew Dalgleish 4th, Alistair Hindle 7th
M55 (10) – Crawford Lindsay 3rd
W65 (5) – Eleanor Pyrah 2nd
Full results are available on the Scottish Sprint 2013 results page of the GRAMP website.
This was also the 2nd event in the 2013 Scottish Orienteering Urban League. A link to the 2013 SOUL tables is available on the SOUL page of the SOA website.
Many stayed in the area for GRAMP’s colour-coded event at Glen Dye the next day.
Glen Dye is south of Banchory, on Deeside, and is a great area. The forest is mostly Scots pine, very open and runnable, though some recent forestry work had created new extraction lanes which were confusing in places. There were some complex moraine features with tricky contour detail, and open heathery ground towards the end with many grassy depressions. It had snowed overnight, and there were a few snow showers during the day, so it was cold, and often wet underfoot.
ESOC members in the top half of the results for their course were:
Black (10 competitors) – Andrew Lindsay 4th
Green (43) – Sally Lindsay 15th, Ian Pyrah 18th
Full results are on the Glen Dye April 2013 results page of the GRAMP website.
Other entries categorised under: Event Reports