Mardley Heath, April 1st 2017
Organisers Comments
The combination of a good challenging area and lovely weather, certainly brought out the crowds. Apart from two Saturday events at well known Burnham Beeches and Ashridge back in 2015, this was our best ever senior turnout for a Saturday event. If this had been a Schools League event as well, we could have achieved an all time Saturday Series record!
Having 52 competitors on the Blue course inevitably challenged our map stocks, resulting in some late runners having to make do with re-cycled maps. Apologies to those who didn’t have pristine new maps at the start and many thanks to those who generously donated their maps after their runs to allow everyone to run their chosen course.
Mardley Heath offers an excellent technical challenge. Mineral workings in the middle of the last century were never used for landfill leaving a post industrial site full of apparently illogical man made hills and depressions, making this easily our most technical area. The area is not big, but John planned his courses to make good use of the land and to only require a second map for the longest Blue course. We didn’t provide a White course, because this wasn’t a Schools League event. I hope any who had to run up to Yellow didn’t find their course too difficult.
Congratulations to:
- Sam Fielding for winning Blue – coming in over 4 minutes ahead of second placed Tom Cochrane and nearly 6 minutes ahead of his normally speedy dad
- Josh M’Caw for winning Light Green over 6 minutes ahead of second placed Helen Errington
- Ella May Rush who won Orange over a minute ahead of second placed James Allison
- Peter Errington (NC) who stormed round Yellow beating first placed Alexander Kaempf by nearly 2 minutes and second placed Maggie Soulsby by almost 2 1/2 minutes.
And of course, everyone else who took part.
Roger
