Summer Trail Runs 2022

Thursday evening trail runs are starting again. These are social training events where you can run on your own or as a group. We meet at 6:30pm each week although you can run at any other time. A Doodle poll has been set up to allow you to sign up - particularly if you can't print your own map. It is intended that all runs will also be MapRun enabled. Runs will be added a few days before the Thursday each week - see below for list.

SO relay teams triumph at British Champs

Congratulations to Andy Parkinson, Di Turner and Robin Smith who took the British Champs title convincingly in the M/W70+ competition. We also followed in SO tradition and performed well in the short relays with silver medals in both the men's short relay (Liam Marsh, Will Heap, Alan Velecky) and women's short relay (Scarlet Heap, Heather High and Anna Chapman).

Eleven teams took part altogether and there was lots of support on the run in for all.

Pat Maher takes M85 British Champion title by 20 seconds

Pat Maher took his first British Champion title at the British Long Champs at Golden Valley near Liphook on 26th March. He won it by only 20 seconds - close competition! Mike Gammon made it onto the podium in silver in M90, Heather High also raced to silver in W16A (missing the top spot by only 31s) and Amelia Bartlett running in W20 Elite won bronze in another well fought competition.

March Club Coaching

Will Heap, one of our Club Coaches ran a fantastic coaching session in the sunshine at Cowdray Forest near Crawley. Participants included children from the age of 11 upwards and adults of all ages who take part in orange to black courses. Everyone had a great day and learnt so much from the different exercises.

We started off with a gentle warm up, led by Scarlet and then split off into three groups.

Strong Junior Performance at Compass Sport Cup

A very strong performance from our junior squad M/W12 to M/W20 helped SO win the regional heat of the annual interclub competition on 13th March. The terrain was really physical with lots of slippery mud around, but our juniors put in an excellent performance on the Balcombe Estate. Our juniors competed in courses from Orange to Short Brown and a number of them ran up on longer courses than their age category, but still beat the competition.

SO win regional heat of Compass Sport Cup

On 13th March 76 members of SO took part in the SE region of the Compass Sport Cup Heats. This is an annual inter-club competition open to all club members. Anyone who is able to do at least an orange has the opportunity to score points for the club and those that don't score points help to push points down against other clubs. It's always a fun occasion. We had seven class winners scoring top points and lots of top three scorers as well as plenty of other runners packed into the results.

CSC and Relays Spring 2022

After a fairly blank year in 2021 the major interclub competitions are hopefully back to normal this year. A Doodle poll has been set up for club members to indicate whether or not they are able/willing to compete/help at these events. Further information about these events is given below.