4 October 2014

Thanks to all those who came along to Hawick and (I trust) enjoyed a good run around ‘The Park’.  I certainly enjoyed planning the event.   Pleasingly, after more than 24 hours of steady heavy rain, the weather faired up by the time the first starter set off and conditions were excellent for competitors.  However, the River Teviot was swollen and high after the rain, so there was no chance of Paul McGreal repeating his famous direct route river crossing of a previous event.

Although not technically challenging, the area does offer plenty of excellent, fast running. The number of competitors was a bit lower than hoped but a wide age range was represented and there was certainly hot competition at the front on the Light Green, with barely a minute between the first three.  There was also deadly rivalry on the Orange course with Calum Murray just ahead of sister Eilidh.

Earlier, Eilidh had the honour of cutting the ribbon to officially open the new Permanent Orienteering course which has just been set up in the Park.  The Permanent course is part of a number of developments, which will be seen in the next year or so, as renovations are made to the Park. Ideally, the permanent course can heighten the profile of orienteering locally and maybe give newcomers to the sport an opportunity to try it out.

As ever, I had oodles of help from Reivers club members in setting up and dismantling the event.  Lindsey did all the ‘techy’ stuff, preparing the maps and control units before the event and running registration on the day.  Robin assisted with putting out the controls while John, Sarah, Ian, Kirstin, Pauline and Paul helped collect them in.  Thank you.

Results here