Junior Jabberwaoc November 2001

Blanka's bit

First of all, congratulations to Helen Gardner for being once again selected to represent England in the Junior Home International, which took place in Wales (Pembrey) during the first weekend of October this year. She did extremely well, finishing second in the individual race, less than three minutes behind the winner.

However, other juniors have also had some pleasing results worth mentioning...

...at the Twin Peaks national/badge event in Macclesfield Forest, Martin Humphries (M14A) was 10th overall, whilst Peter Gardner (M16A) made the 9th place overall having been 10th and 7th on day 1 and day 2 respectively. Helen Gardner (W16A) finished second in Saturday’s national event and was 4th overall,

...at the Newborough national event, which was designated to determine this year’s British Champions, Helen finished 8th in W16A, and Martin Humphries was 11th in M14A.

We have also managed to get a full team out to the Peter Palmer relays which took place at Sutton Park in Birmingham. We had a mixed team of runners with varied experience, but managed to get some night training organised the weekend before the event, so hopefully the event wasn’t such a great shock to the system. Out of the 18 teams that were there, we finished 14th. Nevertheless we managed to beat NOR (their second runner mispunched, so they were disqualified, but their overall time was longer than ours) and everyone enjoyed the event.

A retrospective look into summer orienteering

Lochaber 2001, the Scottish 6 day orienteering festival, took place in August, on the incredibly wet west coast of Scotland. Lots of WAOC juniors took part, and braved the Scottish bog. Gold, silver and bronze badges were earned by lots of junior competitors, Well done everybody who entered.

Day 1's many streams were described as being "invisible but easily heard". From the incredibly wet O-kits of unlucky competitors, it looks as if most people didn't hear their streams either. Days 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 were all equally wet but none the less enjoyable.

Fort William seemed to welcome the orienteers for the week, but the people of Fort William were all horrified when a local magazine got course lengths and distances from the Event centre muddled up. It told the locals that the shortest course was 5 miles, and the longest course would be around 40 miles!

2500 competitors all crammed themselves into nearby B&Bs, hotels, and hostels. The more outgoing orienteers stayed at the event campsite. This turned out to be a complete disaster. The once green, grassy field of tents is probably still recovering from its sudden transformation into a huge pool of mud.

The courses themselves were very interesting, I think it's a record amount of water in my shoes by the finish! Day 1 was mainly getting used to the map, and all its brown squiggly lines. These contours are rarely seen on East Anglian maps, which is probably a good thing, as they are just a little confusing.

I hope everybody enjoyed the event, and will be going to Moray 2003.

Clare Woods (W14)

Peter Palmer Junior team relays (Sutton Park, Birmingham)

Thanks to the support of Ian Renfrew, the club captain, we were able to organise a night training session at Ampthill Park the week before the relay, giving some of those who have never tried night orienteering before a taster of what it was light. The more experienced orienteers were able to practice some of their techniques, which are especially important when you are running in the dark. Interestingly we found that some of the juniors were not to keen on using the compass to check the direction, which may be habit formed from running in East Anglia where the terraion does not always make you think a compass is necessary. However, if you were to run in areas like Scotland or Scandinavia, you would very much need to use a compass. So think about it.

The juniors were accompanied by Ian Renfrew and Ursula Oxburgh on the minibus journey to Birmingham. Here’s an extensive report of the race written by Ursula:

JabberWAOC put in a good, steady performance, with no disasters and a number of really good runs. Helen Gardner went out first and came in 5th in 47 mins for 5.4K (8.3 min/K) - an absolutely stunning night run with many teams putting their M18s on this leg - you will not be surprised to hear that Helen set out at the back of the pack and already looking at her map! Fortunately no cows this time, and rabbits are OK as they have red eyes AND get out of your way. Simon Gardner went out next - his first ever night leg, also a red of 5.4K and came back in 70 mins, which was sterling stuff. He fell into a gorse bush and had great difficulty in extricating himself so he really did very well.

Martin Humphries went out on the dawn leg - 63 mins for a 5.5K Light Green. Whatever his problems on the course he sprinted in in very impressive style. Clare Woods went next. I persuaded her to pin her control card to a sweatband on her sleeve, with a tale of the time that a former WAOC chairman lost his unattached control card at the Harvester and disqualified the whole team. She took 37 mins for a 3.5 Orange and was very disappointed with herself and said that she could have gone faster, but it was 8 minutes quicker than last year and a really good steady relay leg. Edward Louth next, also Orange, in 41 mins. He was pleased with that, and seemed happy with his run.

Then Jamie Taylor to do the second 5.5K Light Green. He had never run 5.5K before but realised that if you went out too fast you would not finish, and he went out very steadily and was back in 73 minutes - a good steady run, with a most impressive sprint in despite the 5.5K. I asked him how it was and he said 'it was easy but a very long way'. Lewis Hadler very willingly ran down on Yellow and came back 26 mins - another steady relay leg.

By now, despite no disastrous runs and Helen's blinder we were in the bottom third and the organisers had a single mini mass start, with some Yellows and quite a lot of Greens. That was really nice for Peter Gardner, our Green runner, as he got a good competitive run. He set off with a most impressive sprint start, overhauled a number of runners and came in in good style, cheered on by the whole team. He did the 6.6K in 49 mins (7.4 min/K), a most impressive run.

We did really well considering that our combined ages this time were only 112 (they had to be 120- for the Handicap trophy), so we reckon that next year we shall have a much better chance. Overall, we finished 14th out of 18 teams.

Peter was acting captain as Blanka was too old to run, and did a really good job. He worked out the running order and made very accurate estimates of likely running times. By the way, he got 8 A*s and 2 As in GCSE - pretty impressive stuff.

Ian Renfrew drove the minibus and Jenni, his girl friend, turned out to be a dab hand at packing kit for 11 people into one seat as he was given a 12-seater and not the 15-seater he had ordered. We did participate in the 5-a-side football but should probably draw a veil over that. We kind of mislaid the tent in the luggage but shared with Southdowns which was fine.

All in all it was great fun, and many thanks to Ian for a fantastic night training exercise on Ampthill and for all his support of the team, to Blanka for the organisation ahead of time and to Peter for captaining on the day. As always, Juniors WAOCs, you were fantastic. You settled together really well, always turned up at the right place at the right time, did your level best on the day and all came and thanked us as the end.

CUOC lent us their headlamps for both the training and the relays, which was very much appreciated.

Well done to everyone who competed!

Ursula Oxburgh

OK, you’ve heard the adult view of the event. Lewis Hadler, who ran the yellow course and competed in the Peter Palmer relay for the first time, has also written a report. Any other juniors interested in saying what they felt about the relay? Just email me and I’ll include your comments in next edition. Blanka.

It was a bright sunny morning when Ian and Jenny pulled up in the mini bus to take us to the Peter Palmer relay races. We were picked up at lunch time and then set off to a Travel Inn north of Cambridge to pick up the rest of the team which comprised of Peter, Simon and Helen Gardner, Edward Louth, Jamie Taylor and Clare Woods. When we got there we realised that we had picked up the wrong sized mini bus, in which all eleven of us squeezed, with all our luggage on one seat! About two thirds of the way through the journey we stopped at the services , where we all freshened up, ready for the rest of the journey. We were heading to a sports centre north of Birmingham where we would be sleeping, there was also a youth centre and several astro turf pitches. We were the first team there, registration wasn’t even set up yet, so we entered the team for the event and we also entered the 5 a side football competition, We then went off in search of the start/finish but decided it best not to, we then went back to the minibus to get our rain coats as it had started raining. We then went off to the town centre where the majority of us had Burger King meals. When we got back it was time for the 5 a side tournament, we were the last team to play. In the first round of the tournament we lost 5-0 and went out to a side at least twice our total age, we then retreated to the youth centre hall were there wasn't enough space, so our team had to sleep on the stage. We then ran through our running order and what we had to do at the handover point, we then settled down for the night.

The next morning we were rudely awakened by some idiot bouncing a basket ball at 4:30 in the morning! I then had a breakfast of cheap imitation weetabix which felt like they were made of twigs. When we got outside it was the break of dawn, it was very misty and there was a bit of drizzle, we stood and watched other runners for two hours, I was surprised to see two members of the team I used to run for, BOK (Bristol Orienteering Klub). There were two runners to go until my run. For a while now the commentators had been talking about a white rabbit that kept running around the spectator control, I thought it was a small rabbit but when they said they were going to try and get an interview with it I wondered what they meant but I soon found out as a man in a white rabbit suit came running out of the woods! He then to ran across the finishing straight when he dived and rugby tackled a man to the ground!!!

It was then my run, the course wasn’t really challenging and the terrain was mostly wooded with a lot of rough open, but my course stayed in the woods. My run went well except for No 7 where I went round the wrong side of a thicket, I only lost about a minute so it wasn’t a major loss.

On the way back we stopped at another services, and then it was an uneventful journey back. The event was great fun and I hope to be able to do it again next year.

Lewis Hadler (M14)

Apologies ...to Adam Smith for not including his puzzle. This was due to having too much other content this time. We will include it next time (Julia Wotton).