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

Congratulations to everyone who ventured out into wet hills of Teviothead today. There was an impressive turnout of over 30 hardy souls. A special welcome to two orienteers from Solway who ventured East to run on Reivers territory today.

It was encouraging to see a number of orienteers taking on the challenge of the contour-only course. The ordinary Light Green course used exactly the same controls so the contour only competitors can compare themselves against those who had the benefit of the black detail on their map. Ian Maxwell, who ran the contour only course had the fastest time of all, but Ian might just have a little bit of local knowledge as well.

The competition at the top of all the standard courses was fierce with Faisal Khursheed winning the Light Green by under two minutes, Marc Heger just pipping Yousuf Khursheed by a minute and half in the Orange and Eilidh Murray had less than a minute to spare over Emma Amos in the Yellow.

In the Light Green Course, James Purves’ time has been adjusted to reflect the fact that his Start punch didn’t register properly. To make the mathematics simple James we just deducted 828 minutes from your recorded first leg time!]

The full results from today’s event can be found by clicking here

The Club barbecue required a further degree of hardiness from Club Members although there was a cover over the barbecue. Thanks are due to John Tullie for fabricating a cover from black bin bags at short notice. A good deal of food and drink was consumed.

The Autumn Series of events is scheduled to start in September. Further details will appear on the website in due course and we look forward to welcoming more and more orienteers to our events.

Results from today’s event are HERE

First of all, thank you to everyone who came along and took part on Saturday. A special thank you to everyone who helped bring in controls and an extra special thank you to Lindsey for advice on planning and for her help on the day.

A heartfelt apology for the muddled controls which affected some folk on the Orange course until I finally understood what a few of you had been trying to tell me about the “missing” tower at 106 and swapped them over. They were the first controls I put out and my brain had obviously not been engaged at that point. The splits are a bit distorted for that leg because I changed them over. Maybe I should have left them but I wanted to do it before Emma on the Yellow course got to them as they were both on her course. I hope that you all enjoyed your run despite this.

The nature of the vegetation in areas of Bowmont has changed quite dramatically, partly due to wind-blow and partly from the ongoing forestry operations so, after my first visit in January, I decided to mainly use the southern part of the map which was less affected by these.

My final visit was on last Monday when I checked the location of the depression where control 119 was. The bracken and stinging nettles were just starting to appear. I was amazed on Saturday to find how much undergrowth had appeared in 4 days and how tall it had grown, making everything off the paths on the Orange course that bit more challenging.

Finally, weren’t we lucky with the weather! We were all geared up for a miserable day and I actually could have done with wearing sun-cream. The rain was around though; parts of the road between Kelso and Edinburgh were seriously flooded and I drove through Gordon in a downpour.

Pauline.

Results from todays event at Gordon Community Woodland are HERE

Light Green gave a choice of full Light Green with normal first part and map memory second part, or doing either part separately.

Apologies to anyone on Light Green who thought the boulder at 119 was a bit small and not in quite the right place – the correct, larger, boulder was about 35 metres north, nearer the path.

Results from today’s Gala Hill event are HERE

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