News
Archive of News and Information stored under the News category.
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.
Spring Club Nights
Club nights returned on Tuesday January 11th. Although all activities will be held outdoors please maintain social distancing and do not come if you are showing symptoms of Covid or have tested positive.
We will meet as a group at 6:30pm each Tuesday although we hope to make many of the activities available online to attempt at your leisure.
Please sign up using the Doodle Poll and indicate (when appropriate) whether or not you would like a map provided (cost £1) or are happy to print off your own.
Event entries on Racesignup
We reviewed the current entry procedure for SO events on racesignup at our recent monthly committee meeting and agreed to add the "number of available maps" for each course. Note that maps for each event are normally printed on about the Monday before the event (yet entries remain open until the evening before the event) but there have recently been instances where the number of entries for a particular course has exceeded the number of printed maps. We are unwilling to "recycle" maps for Covid reasons and wish to avoid anyone having the disappointment of turning up but not being able to run. Club members can help by entering our events sooner - this will allow us the opportunity to print more maps where we appear to have underestimated demand.
Juniors learn about contours at Washington Common
At Washington Common on 22nd January, we held our third training session of the season for our younger juniors and some new adults. We had a great turnout and had four large groups taking part. Our main focus for this session was understanding the brown features on the map. Washington Common is a good venue for this as there are lots of steeper features.
We started by looking at contours on the map and comparing them to a 3D model to help picture the ground. Can you see how the model relates to the map below? You may need to rotate it slightly!
SO take over a third of class winner titles in the South East Long Champs
The South East Long Champs took place at the same event as the Southern Champs at South Ashdown on 12th Dec 2021. The proximity of the event meant that lots of SO members were able to attend and we walked away with 13 South East Long Distance Champions. Great to see some new medal winners in the list!
SO has five new Southern Champions
Congratulations to Emma Chapman (W10), Scarlet Heap (W18), Chris Hooker (M60), Di Turner (W70) and Roger Maher (M80) who have now become Champions of the South of England. They all took part in the Southern Long Distance Champs at South Ashdown on 12th Dec 2021.
Junior training gets off to a good start
At Blacklands on 11th December, we held our second training session of the season for our younger juniors. Our main focus for this session was practising turning corners whilst keeping the map pointing in the right direction.
Success at South East Sprint Champs 2021
A number of SO members travelled to Chatham Dockyard for an exciting sprint around the dry dock. The courses included whether to run over a ship or around it, under a submarine or around, through tunnels and even into a huge multi-storey lifeboat warehouse.
SO took home lots of medals!
Autumn Club nights
Club nights return on Tuesday September 21st. Although all activities will be held outdoors please maintain social distancing and do not come if you are showing symptoms of Covid or have tested positive / having to isolate.
We will meet as a group at 6:30pm each Tuesday although we hope to make many of the activities available online to attempt at your leisure.
Please sign up using the Doodle Poll and indicate (when appropriate) whether or not you would like a map provided (cost £1) or are happy to print off your own.
New Summer SOGLs - 3 courses to try
As a substitute for our normal summer series of park sprint events, this year we have set up a new series of MapRun enabled short courses (ca 2.5km) in public areas. These can be run at speed or simply for navigation training.
There are three now available to try. Give it a go - it's just like a real event. Read on to find out more...
2021 Trail Runs
Thursday evening trail runs continue to be offered through the Summer. These are social training events where you can run on your own or as a group. We continue to offer a range of start times to allow you to run when and with whom you want. A Doodle poll has been set up to allow you to sign up for a particular time slot. It is hoped that all runs will also be MapRun enabled. Runs will be added a few days before the Thursday each week - see below for list.
Junior Team performs well at YBT 2021
A team of 9 juniors travelled to The Cotswolds to take part in the annual Yvette Baker Junior Finals. The competition is decided based on the scores of the first 9 competitors in your team, so we were hoping for a clean round from everyone. Our juniors didn't let us down and everyone scored to put us into 8th place out of the 12 best clubs in the country. A great effort from everyone!