BUCS 2012 is organised in the Lake District by CUOC on 17th-18th March. The closing date for entries is Thursday 23th February and closing date for accommodation/social is Sunday 26th February. Please Contact Us if you have any queries.

NOTE ON ACCOMMODATION An advance warning: UVHS have not yet given final confirmation of allowing us to stay, but will do so on 21st February. It is possible accommodation may change and people may be required to drive from the social to accommodation. This will be confirmed after 21st February.

EMBARGO Note the LOC Night Event (details here) on 11th February uses the area to be used for the BUCS relay. BUCS competitors should not take part in this event or else should declare themselves as non-competitive for BUCS. The Galoppen on Bigland East the following day is not affected.

Provisional Details (updated 9th Feb) Note provisional relay course lengths and start times, and call for next years' organisers!
Social Form

Our annual Christmas Tour this year took place in the Lake District. After travelling up on Sunday night, we arrived to find the curse of Ben-Windsor-organised-accommodation had struck for the second year, and we had no running water. Making do with a stream for collecting toilet/cooking water and a distant supermarket for drinking water, the training went on.

Day1: High Rigg: A series of attack points and aiming off courses, followed by a sprint course planned by Scott Collier. A good chance for the experienced to get into the terrain and to remember the basics of orienteering, and a chance for those new to the sport to be introduced and shadowed around courses. James T, Alan, and Ben S decide to take a "short 40 minute jog" back 6km to the hut, not realising it involved such a massive climb and thigh-deep snow, and they arrive home 90 minutes later, shortly followed by the shopping car with £250 of food.

Day2: Angle Tarn Pikes: The Bens decide to draw CUOC/OUOC in the snow, and Peter shows his maturity by adding to this. At 400m high the area is coated in knee deep snow with even deeper drifts. We train with several contour courses, followed by a shortened trains exercise because the wind is picking up, the snow is coming, and it's dangerous to stay. In the evening Scott cooks curry, but not before taking a bite of his favourite food: the kitchen knife.

Day3: Skelgyll: "A near vertical slope covered in rock covered in moss covered in windblow where it's nearly always hailing." More contour based exercises on this steep slope, followed by a trip to Bilbo's cafe.

Day4: a write off: The wind is up, it's raining, and they've recorded 165mph gusts on top of Cairngorm. We decide going up on the fells isn't the best idea and aim for Great Tower instead. But wait, Windermere is flooded because along with the rain, all the snow is melting into the lakes. Returning to the hut, we set out on a run partway up Helvellyn, but quickly turn back as it's dangerously windy and freezing, and some of us continue the run down into the valley instead. Oxford have their daily game of Tron in the afternoon, then we do circuits and go to the pub for dinner. Oxford get a little overexcited by the game of dominos.

Day5: Gowbarrow: The weather has calmed a little, and despite Ben Stevens claiming he thought he was going to die whilst control hanging, everybody else sensibly goes out in waterproofs to run a simplification course or control pick on another fantastic open fell, still covered in snow. In the afternoon is a draw-your-own-map head to head race, which sees many people getting lost and having to get out the backup full map.

Day6: Great Tower: As is traditional, the Tour Champs were planned on Great Tower by Matthew Vokes. This was a single 5km course run by the men and and women.
Results
Splitsbrowser
Winsplits
Routegadget

Click here for QUOTES
More PHOTOS

Thank you to Matthew our excellent training officer for organising most of the training and transport, as well as everybody who planned and drove. It was a great tour, and great preparation for Varsity on 10th March and BUCS on 17-18th March. Already looking forwards to next year's one!

The last clubnight of term was held at Churchill, organised by CUOC and was an Adventure Race. This involved a 30 control score course, but with a twist: at 8 of the sites competitors would find a set of instructions and these would explain an activity, the photos show two of these: punching a control in a tree using a long stick, and completing a MicrO around a maze. Congratulations to Katrin Harding for winning over Tom Louth: both completed everything, and both made the same mistake on the compass bearing challenge, but Katrin was back quicker!

Results

By four different sets of transport, ten CUOCers made their way down to Epping forest this Sunday for the Michael Brandon CHIG Regional Event.
Congratulations to Mark Salmon who won the Brown course by almost 3 minutes!

Results
Winsplits
Splitsbrowser
Routegadget

Training on Wednesday was held 10 miles West of Cambridge in Cambourne, a new area including some contours, unusual for so near to Cambridge! Well done to Matthew Vokes for winning the long course.
Full Results are available here.

This weekend (12-13th November) seven CUOC members braved the joys of the X5 in order to compete in the SprintO. The event, usually hosted by Cambridge but this year hosted by Oxford for the first time, was held in Shotover Woods. The format was two Prologues (one for the women) of about 2km in the morning, followed by a closely run head-to-head final where competitors started in pairs spaced by 15 seconds. Each member of the pair would run three loops, starting on different ones but having the same final loop for maximum competition.

In the men’s, Ben Windsor was the top from Cambridge in 4th place, 2:39 minutes behind winner Ralph Street from Sheffield. Oxford and JOK took the next few spots, followed by Mark Salmon, Andrey Poletayev, James Hoad taking consecutive 11th-15th places, with Terence Goldberg in 15th. Newcomer Chris Ostermeyer did well in his first ever orienteering event to finish 20th for Cambridge.

Despite Cambridge having one of its strongest ever women’s teams this year, for this event they only fielded a single competitor – Andrea Štefková who finished in third place, 6:49 down on the winner Julia Blomquist. The 2011 SprintO was rounded off with the Elite AlcO. This was enjoyed by everybody, except for one unfortunate slip on some bláto resulting in a cut knee and trip to hospital.

Everybody then travelled back to Oxford City Centre for showers and a social event including a meal in Exeter college. Sheffield’s cohort of one person was particularly enthusiastic.

CUOC stayed the night in Oxford and four of us travelled to a regional event near Woking the following day.

Overall SprintO Results
Prologue 1 Splits
Prologue 2 Splits
Final Splits
Routegadget
Full SN Regional Event Results
Photos

The first ever CUOC and WAOC MicrO championships were held at the University Athletics centre on Wednesday evening 9th November, expertly planned by Matthew Vokes
Congratulations to CUOC winners Ben Windsor and Andrea Štefková.

Results
All Controls Map

Final results are now available (28th Oct). Any queries should be addressed to cityrace@cuoc.org.uk. BOF ranking points will be uploaded as soon as possible, but CUOC are currently having issues with the British Orienteering results system.

All results and comments can now be found on the event page

Lost Property

Found: One key with a rectangular head and no keyring.

Lost: One Garmin 405 in grey - if you have inadvertently picked this up or are looking after it, please email cityrace@cuoc.org.uk and we'll put you in touch with the owner (anonymously if necessary!).

Congratulations to Mairead Rocke and Matthew Halliday who have been selected for the British Orienteering Elite Development Squad. Click here for the full report.

Results of the Freshers event are now available.
Well done to everyone who ran, hope to see you again during the year!

Welcome to everybody coming to Cambridge at the start of October, we hope you'll experience the fun of orienteering and join in during Freshers' week! Most information comes round on the mailing list, but there are some useful links below.

Termcard
Subscribe to the mailing list
Events page. More detailed information comes round on the mailing list.
The first big event of term is the Cambridge City Race, details in the post below.
Contact the captains
Membership Form

Looking forward to seeing you!

Meanwhile here's a video to show the sort of thing we get up to during the year.

The joint annual Cambridge/Oxford Christmas tour organised by CUOC will take place in the Lake District from 4th - 11th December. Click here for provisional details.

CUOC sent a team of 7 people to Eccelsall woods, Sheffield for the Harvester relays this weekend. We were against tough competition of teams who had been selected from entire open clubs, whereas we were put together from whoever was available. Our first leg runner came back in last place, as did our second leg runner, third leg runner, and indeed every other runner, to leave the team CUOCumbers in 20th with four mispunched teams placed below it, about 2 hours down on 19th place. The relay was made into a weekend by a middle race on Saturday afternoon, an ultrasprint on Saturday evening, and an urban race on Sunday morning.

However CUOC were not phased by the low positioning, the runners kept their enthusiasm and excitement and kept cheering each other on. So the main reason for the team entering was satisfied: to have a fun weekend. Hopefully we will have the same again next year, and maybe a Jukola team to go with it!

Photos: The mass start of the relay at Midnight (left), Harriet Burdett running in to finish 4th leg (right)
Full Harvester Results
Full Middle Race Results
Quotes

Matt Halliday and Mairead Rocke from CUOC are both competing over the next week at the Junior World Championships in Poland. (3rd-8th July). After the Sprint and Long races Mairead took two top 20 results, with 20th in the Sprint and an excellent 14th in the long, and Matt gained top GB spot with 40th in the Middle. GB's relay teams finished in 9th for Men and 11th for Women. Full results available here

Results of the May Week event can be found below.
Results and Splits | Splitsbrowser | Winsplits

As a result of Ben’s spur-of-the-moment idea to go training abroad, four CUOC members and four DrongO/JOK/York members travelled out on £26 return Ryanair flights for three days of training on some outstanding terrain in Norway. So it was that we left Cambridge at 5am, pockets stuffed full of stuff to meet Ryanair’s hand baggage requirements.

On arrival we were kindly greeted by sunshine and a man called Øyvind who was in charge of the OK Moss club hut and offered to pick us up from the airport. After only 13km we were at the hut which was surrounded for miles but nothing but amazing Norwegian pine trees, and the town of Moss. And unsurprisingly, every bit of it was mapped.

A quick but relatively expensive food shop later involving an awful lot of sausage and we were sorted for the duration of the trip. We started with the area to the North of the hut, with less experienced starting on a line course and the more experienced on a very technical loop planned by Ben Stevens, involving an awful lot of dot knolls.

Later in the evening more Norwegians arrived to take us to the club’s exciting Thursday evening training. They call it club training, but as far as I could see it’s identical to what we would call a summer evening event. I prefer their description. Ben Stevens did well to come second on the long course within 3 minutes of the winner, and Matt Halliday came in just 19 seconds behind. Matthew Vokes and Ben Windsor walked most of the long course as a map memory, since Matthew had hurt his ankle earlier whilst making videos of jumping off things.
Full Results

Friday was just rain, rain and more rain. But this wasn’t going to stop us training! In the morning Matt Halliday planned a fantastic course of about 6km starting/finishing at the hut in the area to the East, giving plenty of opportunities to get compass and visualisation just right. Matthew Vokes had planned a chasing sprint for the afternoon, which was really enjoyable and got competitive as well. The evening saw a Micro sprint around the hut planned by Matthew, and the late evening saw Ben Windsor and Scott Collier out for a 1km NightO course.

Full MicrO Results
Full Sprint Results | Winsplits | Splitsbrowser | Routegadget

Saturday was our final day and we decided to trek South for 4 km or so to an awesome area surrounded by fjords. On the way there we stopped for a 1km map memory course in pairs, then 30 minutes of a relocation exercise before lunch whilst Ben Stevens hung a peg relay he had planned, which rounded off the mini-tour nicely. Matt Halliday, fully complacent beforehand that he would get every peg, did indeed live up to his words and also finished 5-10 minutes before Matthew Vokes, Scott Collier, and Ben Windsor who all finished at the same time.

Back to the hut for sweet and sour sausages and rice, and a clean up, then we walked out about 6km to Moss station to get a train back to the airport.

A brilliant three days of training, £80 total cost, there is no possible reason not to do it again in future! There were also many amusing quotes.

11 June 2011: In the heat of exams, or exam celebrations, two CUOCers ventured out to Milton CP for this event. David Maliphant came 3rd on the long course, as shown valiantly demonstrating the run in here, and Ben Windsor won the short course, being mostly against 7 year olds.

Sunday 22nd May 2011: Three people from CUOC who are unfortunate enough not to have realised that working for exams should be more important than orienteering, get the bus to Stansted airport and walk 5km to Hatfield forest for training. It was some good training, consisting of an aiming off loop, two 'general' loops, a short legs on thickets visualisation loop, and a 1-teamed odds and evens relay (we won). Matthew here demonstrates how to get through a nettle overgrown footpath on the way there from the airport, unfortunately there aren't actually any photos of the actual orienteering. Click to enlarge.

Congratulations to Matt Halliday and Mairead Rocke who have both been selected for British Orienteering's Talent Fulfillment Coaching Camp in Nova Gorcia, Slovenia in late July. The athletes will spend the first part of the camp assessing their technical, tactical and physical ability, before competing in 5 days of hard, serious racing.

On the weekend of 14/15 May CUOC went to the BOC! A team of 7 CUOC runners traveled to near Sheffield on the minibus, and had a great time, even enjoying the nettles and cold wind, and most importantly had a weekend of great orienteering! A huge well done to everyone who came!

On Sunday in the relay, the women's team (Emily Lester, Andy Strakova, Vicky Stevens) finished 12th overall. In the men's Matthew Vokes ran a solid first leg to bring the team in mid-field in 15th place, followed by Ben Windsor who despite having a reasonable run, managed to run straight past the spectator control without punching it, disqualifying the team. David Maliphant completed the team to finish in what would have been 22nd of 29.

In the individual competition on Saturday we also had some really good runs, especially from Vicky (10th in W21E), Matt H (6th in M20E) and Matthew V (9th in M20E). The results for both Saturday’s individual event and Sunday’s relays can be found here

We will keep training hard (especially when we have the training sessions organised by Matthew) so that we can beat OUOC’s ‘posh boys’ next year!

(Images: Ben Windsor & chris5aw, used here under Creative Commons licence, click to enlarge. Top left: Matthew Vokes runs in, Top right: Vicky Stevens jumps over a fence, Bottom: Men's & Women's relay teams)

The CUOC AGM and annual dinner were held on 27th April 2011 after Cuppers. Congratulations to the new committee, and it looks like we've got a good year ahead of us!

Today (1st May) 4 CUOCers decided to get the train to Thetford forest to go training. Little did we know our start would be so close to the beginnings of a forest fire. They suspect it was the remains of a campfire which looked like it had gone out which started it. We also saw their exciting thermal imagine camera and they used about 1800 litres of water.

And of course, we did actually do some training as well as demonstrated expertly by Tom (see photo). Click photos to enlarge.

Non-orienteering related update: It actually turns out that on the very same day, Steph and friends and train set, who were merrily chomping at a picnic on the backs, were moved by the arrival of a helicopter.

After a fantastic turnout at West Cambridge, Jesus College won Cuppers by two points. Scoring is calculated by 1st place = 1 point, 2nd place = 2 points, and so on, with the top three runners to count including at least one men's and one women's runner. 5 colleges fielded a full team, and Trinity and Corpus also managed part-teams.

1st JESUS 12
2nd CLARE 14 (top position 1st)
3rd ST CATHERINE'S 14 (top position 4th)
4th FITZWILLIAM 16
5th HOMERTON 29

Full Results and splits
Team Results
Winsplits
Splitsbrowser
Routegadget is now available.

Matthew Halliday and Mairead Rocke both won the men's and women's 20 elite classes overall for days 2 and 3. Matt came first by over three minutes over Oxford's Alan Cherry in 2nd place, and Mairead triumphed over Bex Harding of Edinburgh by almost 5 minutes after an astonishing 6-minute win on the Saturday.

Both collected their prizes at the prizegiving on Sunday (Matt pictured left with 3rd placed Jamie Stevenson of Scotland, Mairead pictured right with 2nd placed Bex Harding and 3rd placed Jo Sheperd, both at Edinburgh). Click to enlarge.

This year the biggest event in the UK, the Jan Kjellström festival of orienteering, was held in Northern Ireland.
Full Results

Day 1: Sprint Race
Two podium positions for CUOC members.
1st W20E Mairead Rocke
3rd M20E Matt Halliday
28th W21E Vicky Stevens
61st M21E Ben Windsor

Day 2: Middle Race
A double win on a 20- age groups for CUOC members.
1st M20E Matt Halliday
1st W20E Mairead Rocke
17th W21E Vicky Stevens
80th (that's LAST) M21E Ben Windsor

Day 2: Long Race
1st M20E Matt Halliday
2nd W20E Mairead Rocke
5th M21S Ben Windsor
17th W21E Vicky Stevens

12 CUOC members flew out to the Czech Republic for five days to some of the best terrain in the world for the annual competition against Oxford. After three days of training, race day arrived.

On Saturday 3rd CUOC appeared in their Varsity kit specially designed to confuse the opponents into thinking they were controls (unsurprisingly, it didn't work). CUOC were expecting to win the women's match but they knew the men's was going to be very tough.

In the women's, Mairead Rocke, Vicky Stevens, and Andy Strakova were the top three counters, and beat Oxford by an astonishing 50 minutes on accumulated time. In addition Mairead won the course by over three minutes in a time of 55:46, and came close to the times which members of the Czech national team would do on that course! Excellent work going on here, and we can do it again next year. Steph Bryant, and Emily Lester completed the team, and Harriet Burdett who wasn't in the first team actually beat these two!

In the men's, despite hurting his ankle part way round the course, Matthew Halliday finished in 66 minutes, just over three minutes being Peter Hodkinson of Oxford who won the course (not counting guest runners). Oxford's next two finishers came in close behind in around 67 minutes each, and Matthew Vokes came in for Cambridge in 71 minutes. With the top four runners for each university to count, Cambridge's final two counters were David Maliphant and Ben Windsor who finished in 95 and 96 minutes. This left Oxford with one runner to finish, and this runner needed to take over 131 minutes for Cambridge to take the win. As Oxford waited for his arrival and Cambridge hoped he wouldn't come, Vaclav ran in in 109 minutes to complete Oxford's counting team and beat CUOC by 23 minutes. Adam Bennett and Mark Salmon completed the CUOC men's team. We're working on it for next year when OUOC will have four national-level men. Look out!

Full Results and Maps
DrongO Varsity Page

Quotes are now available.

Photos: Training, Varsity Match, Relays
Photos courtesy of Ian Buxton. Left: the CUOC team, Vicky Stevens punches the final control, David Maliphant Runs in to finish. Right: Vaclav finishes to give Oxford the win, the winning CUOC women's team (Andy, Vicky, Mairead). Click to enlarge.