Wimborne Orienteers

British Sprint and Middle Championships

Campbell Park, Milton Keynes, Sat 30 September and

Wendover Woods, Sun 1 October 2017

This weekend was the British Sprint and Middle Championships and we had a number of WIM members taking part.

Saturday was the Sprint - for this you initially run heats which determine which final you run in - A, B or sometimes C if a very large entry in a class.

Top result of the day went to Keith Henderson in M75 who becomes the British Champion and Grace French who was on the Podium having come 2nd in W10.

Other results were
Sarah Horsler 4th W16
Elizabeth Horler 6th W14A
Sue Hands 7th W65A
Karen French 7th W50A
Wendy Bullen 9th W45A
Brian Johnson 18th M65A
Tamsin Horsler 2nd W50B
John Oakes 7th M45B
Charlotte Oakes 9th W14B
Kath Pike 2nd W50C
Andy French 11th M50C

Sunday was the Middle Distance. Top result went to Brian Johnson who becomes British Champion and Harry Bratcher-Howard who was on the Podium having come 3rd in M10.

Other results were
Sarah Horsler 4th W16
Keith Henderson 4th M75
Grace French 5th W10
Tamsin Horsler 7th W50
Sue Hands 8th W65
Elizabeth Horsler 11th W14
Wendy Bullen 12th W45
Andrew Howard 16th M40
Charlotte Oakes 24th W14
John Oakes 25th M45
Steve Horlser 30th M50
Karen French 30th W50
Kath Pike 37th W50
Andy French 48th M50

Well done to everyone and particularly our British Champions.

Chris Branford

British Middle Championships – Wendover Woods

by Brian Johnson

The M65 course at the British Middle Championships almost seemed to be designed for me. The wood was low visibility, but very runnable and there was only 95m of climb on my course. We had 26 controls in 4.5km (no long legs) and most of the controls were on small point features, many in the low visibility. Vegetation boundaries were vague; on maps of 30 years ago this would probably have been a largely white map but now all the vegetation was mapped. My technique in this type of terrain is to simplify; Compass and Pace (every step of the way) and ignore everything else on the map apart from paths and contours. There was no dead running apart from the final control and the run-in.

This worked very well and I apart from slight hesitations on a few controls (15 seconds maximum loss?) I hit the first 24 controls clean before losing about a minute on control 25. I was still a little surprised I was announced as leading on the run-in. I was even more surprised when I looked at the results and saw I had a six minute lead.

It was now a long wait because the seeds were all starting 30-45 behind me. Among those still to finish was Steve Whitehead (EBOR) who this year has won all three days of the JK, the Midland and British ‘classic’ length championships, the British Night Championships and the Scottish 6-Day. Eventually he came finished in third place, 3 minutes behind me, having lost three minutes on control 10 and a few other small mistakes. Andy Hempstead (HOC), who was the outstanding M65 orienteer in 2016, was leading until he made a 3-minute mistake on control 19 (one of the easier controls?) and he finished in 4th place. One of the other favourites, Axel Blomquist (BAOC) got the fastest splits on 10 of the controls but 7min lost on control 6, together with a number of other mistakes left him back in 8th place. Bob Dredge (WCh) who won the sprint and John Simmons (BOK) both had disastrous runs and both mispunched as well. I didn’t know Tony Carlyle (Aire), who pipped Steve Whitehead by 4seconds, but his splits suggest he is a steady (Ie slow like me) runner who doesn’t make many mistakes.

Moral: Before any event you need to decide what strategy you need to use for that particular event. It was clear that in this event there would be much ‘searching’ for small features in low visibility wood. Accuracy was going to be more important than speed. For this sort of course accurate compass-work is necessary, but pacing is even more important. You cannot expect pacing to work unless you spend a lot of time practising it so it becomes automatic and you learn how to adjust pacing for different runnabilities and gradients. Use minor events to practise your technique.

M65 Middle Distance course