JIRCs & SHI Weekend
Two events in one, over two days, two organising teams, two planners, two controllers, two SI Teams and nearly 300 competitors in total made for a very busy weekend for several of the NWOA clubs over the weekend of the 27th/28th as we hosted these two events together for the first time ever !
The timing of both the Junior Inter Regional Champs and Senior Home International events falling in the North West was a first, but it was so lovely to see both the Juniors and Seniors racing on the same areas, using the same controls !
South Ribble Orienteers (SROC) provided the bulk of the manpower and key officials for the individual day on Saturday at Torver, supported by additional helpers from WCOC, BL and LOC and PFO particularly on SI. Torver Back and Low Commons provided some good technical terrain to test everyone on the first day with a mix of woodland and some more open areas along the western edge of Coniston Water, the terrain across the road only being used for the Senior courses. John did a great job planning some fantastic courses, with both start and finish within 200m of the event centre. The Seniors had some very long courses - 15k for the M21s and 13k for the W21s ! They also all had a 1:15k scale map, something again they don't see very often now.
The JIRCs courses all remained on Torver Back Common, some of the technical terrain there caught out a few on some controls even straight out of the start. The overall winners for the individual day were England for the SHI and ScotJos for the JIRCs.
Sunday dawned bright and sunny, ready for the relays at Haverigg Bent Hills sand dunes near Millom. The team was mainly led by LOC for this day with support from WCOC, SROC, BL again and the two SI Teams from LOC and PFO. The girls teams were first out into the terrain, from assembly it was great to be able to see runners going in and out of the dunes all over and all those who stopped at the top of some obviously trying to work out where they were ! The boys teams followed out very shortly after and it wasn't long before we had a stream of runners into the finish and handover area.
The Seniors started later today, to allow the Juniors to enjoy the area and to start some of their long journeys back home after - there were some tired legs and fried minds after the longer individual day courses ! Again, we could see people running all over the dunes in the sunshine, Richard had planned courses with a very large number of gaffles, there were very few people running identical courses. In fact, several of the first leg runners on handover were advising their outgoing runners to check their control codes !
Both SI Teams managed to create overall results speedily in time for both presentations - congratulations to all winning teams and to everyone who represented either their Regional Squad or country at these events. Hopefully, the Juniors had a glimpse of what it's like to represent their country, from having both events together.
None of this weekend would have been possible at all without a huge number of people being involved and giving so freely of their time, so thank you to everyone on the organising teams for both the JIRCs and SHI - the planners John (individual) and Richard (relays) and controllers Keith (individual) and John (relays), organisers Rebecca, Simonas and Roy for the individual day and Derek for the relays, plus both SI Teams - Cath & Steve (JIRCs) and Ali & Mike (SHI) and all those who organised overnight accommodation and meals and prizes and helped in any way at all.
Finally, thanks are also due to the Raymond Priestley Centre at Torver for accommodating us on Saturday and Millom RUFC for Sunday.