Well done to everybody that turned up today in the howling gales. Congratulations to our individual winners, Mairead Rocke of Churchill for the women and Mark Salmon of Jesus for the men. Clare took the college title by three points from Fitzwilliam.

Results
Winsplits
Splitsbrowser
Routegadget - please draw your route for others to see!

Why not join the orienteering mailing list and find out about all the cracking events, trips and socials we have? Or email the captains and we'll do it for you!

Results from the 2012 AGM committee nominations seconding competition are now available. Congratulations to Harriet and Katrin for seconding the most nominations.
UPDATE: Now including results from the slightly less important new committee elections.

Congratulations to Mairead Rocke and Katrin Harding who have been selected to run for GB in international competitions this summer. Mairead has been selected to run in the Sprint and Long distance races at the World University Orienteering Championships in Alicante, Spain from 30th June to 7th July 2012, whilst Katrin will run at the Junior World Orienteering Championships, being held in Košice, Slovakia from 7th to 14th July 2012. Good luck to both of them!

We have a new Risk Assessment.

Congratulations to three CUOC members for some good results at the JK in Scotland this weekend. Katrin Harding had a fantastic weekend, with a bronze medal in the sprint, then Silver in the long and overall.
Sprint
Katrin Harding W20E 3rd
Mairead Rocke W21E 11th
Matthew Vokes M20E 13th
Middle/Long and Overall
Katrin Harding W20E 4th/2nd, 2nd overall
Mairead Rocke W21E 14th/30th, 23rd overall
Matthew Vokes M20E 9th/16th, 13th overall

All Results

The first control of the B final took competitors into this complex network of beautifully shaped trees A great day of racing around York university consisting of heats in the morning followed by a hotly contested final in the afternoon gave way to some good results from CUOC. Mairead Rocke was the only member to make it through to the A final, for the top 18 runners from the heats. Despite being disappointed with her run, she still finished 12th overall. Katrin Harding ran whilst ill and didn't make the A final, but finished a respectable 8th in the B.

Against very tough competition, no CUOC men made it to the A final. In the B final, Ben Windsor made some time losses in the first part of the course, but pushed hard around the rest to finish 8th, 72 seconds down on winner Peter Hodkinson who was sporting a trial version of Oxford's new orienteering top which included Oxford's skyline coloured in a rather vile shade of dark blue - but CUOC need to watch out if the new tops make them all run like this! Tom Dobra had an excellent final in his debut British Champs to finish 55th, with a time of 15:11. Matthew Vokes avoided slipping in any goose poo, but was disappointed with several mistakes, finishing 24 seconds later.

Heat Results
Final Results

Results are now published from both days:
Individual Results
Individual Winsplits
Individual Splitsbrowser
Individual Routegadget - please add your route!
University Scores after Individual

Relay Results
Relay Winsplits
Relay Splitsbrowser
University Scores after Relay

Individual Photos (courtesy of Ian Buxton)
Relay Photos (courtesy of Ian Buxton)

Well done to Edinburgh, who once again won the match against the Combined Services and took home 'Fergus'.
Combined Services Match Overall Points

Lost Property: we have found a pair of navy leggings, a blue Umbro water bottle, a green sheet of cloth and a fold-up washbag containing a purple striped shirt. If any of these are yours, please get in touch with the organisers to make arrangements, but be aware that it's locked up until next term now!

Thanks to everyone to came, we hope you all enjoyed the event!

March 17-18 2012: 16 CUOC athletes and some very kind drivers travelled to the Lake District for the annual BUCS British University Orienteering Championships, organised by CUOC for apparently the first time in our 41 year history. On reflection, this is probably because while the rolling "hills" of East Anglia are not up to the job of hosting BUCS, organising an event 250 miles away from Cambridge is something of a logistical challenge. It's hard enough just getting a squad up there, but the club's drivers, parents and alumni came good and enabled a 400% increase in CUOC turn out from last year. And luckily for us, an elite team of organisers (Ben, Matthew and Lucy, our high profile signing from EUOC) rose to the challenge of putting on BUCS with a little help from local clubs LOC and SROC.

A sunny Saturday morning saw the "Getting CUOC to the Lakes, mk7" plan finish bang on schedule and the traditional game of "how can we get this CUOC tent to stand up" began. With the event set up to Lucy's approval and LOCs "No Go No Whislte" signs spell-checked, the event began. Loughrigg is a steep and intricate open fell, to all intents and purposes the exact opposite to the flatlands of Thetford Forest that much of our team have had to train on. Nevertheless, CUOC had some good results, particularly in the Women's where Mairead Rocke and Katrin Harding claimed 4th and 9th position respectively. Three runners from each of the A courses count towards the overall score, so for Cambridge this was...

Men's A 21st Matthew Vokes 67:14 33rd David Maliphant 73:31 38th Mark Salmon 76:38

Women's A 4th Mairead Rocke 42:27 9th Katrin Harding 47:23 24th Andy Strakova 58:56

After the event, the organisational mantle passed from Lucy Fryer to Ben Windsor, overall coordinator and social organiser. A mad dash to the very nice Victory Hall followed to open it up for accommodation, followed by a trip to Coronation Hall in Ulverston to set up the social. Both halls were considerably more luxurious than your average village hall, but Coronation Hall turned out to be a fully equipped theatre, beautifully decorated in Cambridge Blue - a perfect setting for orienteers to tuck into the enormous buffet (future BUCS organisers take note - order food for more people than you have coming to satisfy hungry orienteers!) and dance the night away in the ceilidh. At the prize giving, it became clear that Cambridge were in fourth as in recent years, but were trailing Oxford by a solitary point. CUOC were unable to repeat the success of Varsity in the beer Boat Race, but yet again, this was mostly because we were following the rules unlike some universities COUGHsheffieldCOUGH. Hamish's awesome music selection played out the rest of the evening, and the evening ended with the great Nicola Manfredi's You and Me after only a little captainly persuasion.

Day two of BUCS is a relay, which this year was held at the very sunny Bigland Estate. Last year we only managed one team, this year we had five! The terrain was a mixture of grassy fell and intricate, marshy forest with plenty of opportunity for errors in such a fast and furious relay format. The start/finish area was particularly exciting as runners could be tracked all the way to the top of the hill as they ran out of the start and for the last 3-4 minutes of their course as they came into the finish. CUOC had some great runs, with Katrin, Andy and Mairead bringing the Women's 1st team into 5th place and the first team that wasn't Edinburgh or Sheffield. The second team of Harriet, Lucy and Steph was 11th. The men's race was won by Oxford, who were promptly disqualified for crossing a wall. Unfortunately, the CUOC men's first team of Mark, Matthew (competing while organising - nice one!) and Ben were also disqualified due a mathematical sequencing error in the arithmetic progression of control sites on the last leg. Luckily the second team of Hallvard, Henrik and David M finished in 12th and only a small mistake on the last leg away from the top ten. Tom, Tin and David W were close behind in 14th. This wasn't quite good enough to get significantly ahead of Oxford in the preliminary results, BUT because Oxford weren't able to field a women's team, their final score depended on how many women's teams managed to finish the course. So it was that we all nervously awaited the arrival of the Univeristy of East Anglia into the finish as the time ticked towards courses closing time. When their last runner had downloaded, it became apparent that they hadn't finished the course so Oxford were still ahead. Still, we consoled ourselves with a close 4th, packed up the event and went home. It wasn't until we got to Ben's house, had dinner and Matthew checked his email that we realised that another team had finished just before UEA, and this team had finished the course correctly giving Oxford an additional point and moving CUOC into 3rd! Not quite the close racing we were hoping for, but a nailbiting finish none the less.

Thank you to our drivers Emily, Adam, Richard and Dan & Lenka Straka and to all involved with organising the weekend - especially LOC and SROC, and Ben, Lucy and Matthew!

(Photos mostly by Ian Buxton used under this license)

At the crack of dawn last Saturday (10 March), 21 CUOC athletes boarded a coach bound for Burnham Beeches, the 2012 Varsity Match and a date with destiny. And only two athletes forgot to set alarms. As the biggest CUOC team since 1986 hurtled towards the enemy both the men and the women were quietly confident, although some of them may have been quietly asleep. For the women, the worry was how many hours they could beat Oxford by; for the men, how to lose respectably to a team of GB runners.

Burnham Beeches is a fast, runnable woodland near Slough described by my Tutor as "the perfect place to get drunk". Sadly, and despite the predictions of the CUOC graphical oracles, Oxford didn't have a pre-race tipple and proceeded to win the Men's A race by 78 minutes. BUT the Cambridge Women had brilliant runs, locking out the podium and beating Oxford by some 76 minutes - impressive given that one fewer runner's time counts in the women's competition. It was left to the Men's B team to restore the honour of the men of Cambridge, which they duly did - by 109 minutes, no less!

Spoons...

The evening's social activities began with the notorious Boat Race. After last year's defeat at the hands of cheating Oxford, CUOC were determined not to lose again. Despite Oxford having some vastly more experienced and talented drinkers than us, CUOC's months of training paid off with a comfortable victory over Oxford, although the Oxford alumni team, JOK, just edged us to the coveted flying pig trophy. The rest of the evening was devoted to food, drink, chat and spoons.

After a night on a village hall floor, Sunday saw the informal relay. This being an Oxbridge competition, a special 5-leg, 3-runner format had been devised by Ian Webb for teams constructed so that each group of three would be approximately equally successful. I can't actually tell who won from the results, but the main thing is that everyone seemed to have a good time in the sun. After the obligatory team photo, we all headed back to the coach and returned to Cambridge with a couple of trophies, several medals and an impatience for the British University Championships next weekend!

Thank you to JOK, especially Ruth Holmes, for putting on the weekend.

Results
Saturday's Routegadget
Photos from Ian Buxton

BUCS 2012 is organised in the Lake District by CUOC on 17th-18th March. Please Contact Us if you have any queries.

FINAL DETAILS (13th March) Note meal now starts at 1730.
Social Driving Directions
Old Map of Relay Area

Individual Start Lists by Class
Individual Start Lists by Club
Start lists updated 15th March. These start lists are now final, it is too late to ask for changes. If you are not eligible for the BUCS competition you must declare yourself to be non-competitive.

AD HOC RELAY RUNS: If you are the only one competing from your university and would like a non-competitive relay run on Sunday, email bucs@cuoc.org.uk

Provisional Details (updated 14th Feb)
Social Form

Last night (Friday 2nd) CUOC attended the bimonthly EAOA committee meeting for what was widely thought to be "the first time since Mark Collis". A great many things were discussed, including dissatisfaction at British Orienteering's methods of operation (what's new?), the possibility of new kites to replace the off-white and faded pink kites seen last weekend and the relative merits of Jammy Dodgers.

The CUOC video was mentioned as an example of a video that is a bit more exciting than British Orienteering's latest effort. I'm going to use it as an excuse to bump it back up to the top of the homepage. If you haven't seen it, you need to watch it! And if you have, watch it again for the orienteering goodness!

The great controversy of the evening concerned the use of non-standard symbols for mapping areas of Thetford Forest where linearly sown plantation trees had been brashed such that a line of fairly impenetrable brashings followed the line of the trees. This makes the forest very runnable if running parallel to the brashings, but impassable if running across the brashing walls. At the West Harling Heath event last Sunday, a sort of directional linear pale green symbol had been used (see picture!) but this is not a standard symbol. There was a suggestion the the undergrowth symbol be used instead, but this does not show direction of runnability. What about the Vegetation: runnable in one direction symbol? It isn't really vegetation... the debate rumbled on for a bit, but ultimately it is OUR decision, because the next map that might be produced with such a symbol is CUOC's! email the captains if you have a strong opinion.

Newly mapped Girton college was used on Wednesday 22nd March for Score training. It is rumoured that a student from Homerton had to book overnight accommodation in central Cambridge in order to attend. Well done to James Hoad for his winning run. Click for Results

Eight CUOC runners ventured into an uncharacteristically warm and sunny piece of Thetford Forest today. With the imminent Varsity and BUCS Relays selections looming large, everyone decided to play a trick on the captains and finish with almost exactly the same times. This was very mean of them.
If the Blue results were separated by gender, Andrea and Harriet would have been first and second as the fastest women on the course. They were separated by just over two minutes after smashing the 10 minute kilometres barrier to smithereens, in a very close race. Look at the Splitsbrowser graph, it's exciting. Things were even tighter on the Brown, and can only really be expressed by a list...

• 4th Mark Salmon 57:07
  11 seconds!
• 5th David Maliphant 57:18
  60 seconds!
• 6th David Wallis 58:18
  27 seconds!
• 7th Tom Dobra 58:45
  
• 12 Tin Wong 1:06:11
  148 seconds!
• 14 Hallvard Indgjerd 1:08:49

So things were particularly close in the fight for fourth. Here's a lovely graph showing just how close things got - Mark, David and David were all in the lead at some point, and Tom would have won by a minute if it weren't for number one... (Yes, post-race geeking is FUN!)

Useful links: Results | Routegadget | Splitsbrowser (where the graph comes from)

The regular Monday CUOC lunch switched locations to Fitz for one week only and since it was nearly Shrove Tuesday, pancakes had to happen. Despite plenty of flipping action, none ended up on the ceiling and the floor was miserably free of pancake debris. Matthew won on style, but for those that wanted a round pancake you couldn't beat the super-efficient (if remarkably boring) Henrik Method. Mairead, in classic geographer fashion, realised that pancake cooking isn't a dichotomy of opposite processes but is in fact a continuum between safe spatula turning and the wild wrist-flick method, and chose to combine elements of both into a sustainable solution.
      
Left: good height, superb concentration. Middle: perfect pancake, but method lacks style. Right: compromise between flippage and the risk of disaster.

Mark's acceptance speech was disappointingly short Congratulations to CUOC's Mark Salmon who won the M20 category in the East Anglian League! Mark headed a CUOC 1-2-3, with Tom and David close behind in a hotly contested class of three. Salmon was presented with his EAOAscar in front of a crowd of adoring fans at a glitzy award ceremony in Thetford Warren. Speaking on the green carpet, Mark said "stop cheering guys, it's really embarrassing. I didn't know I'd won anything. What is the East Anglian League anyway?"

The support act to the awards ceremony was the East Anglian CompassSport Cup Qualifier. The CompassSport Cup is an inter-club competition aimed at open clubs with regional heats before a national final. To do well you need to have a very wide range of age classes, so it wasn't worth CUOC entering. Many of our runners who don't have a 'home' club decided (with just a little persuasion...) to join WAOC for the occasion, and helped WAOC to a win! They also looked unbelievably cool in the super-snazzy WAOC club kit. 9 CUOC / WAOC runners pitched up thanks to a fleet of lifts. Special mention to Mark (4th on Brown), Harriet (6th on Blue Women) and Tom (9th on Blue Men). The good news is that everyone will now be subjected to even more of WAOC's best persuasive powers to get a good turn out at the final, which is somewhere up north on 30 September.

8 CUOC members braved the cold and snow to train in Brandon & High Lodge over the weekend. As usual, we got a shockingly early train to Brandon and walked the short, icy distance into the area. Matthew had planned some excellent exercises for the morning, practising attack points, bearings and speed control on longer legs before a fun chasing sprint style race in the afternoon in a surprisingly complicated area of pits and depressions. This meant combining two slightly skewed maps together from each side of the road, which had the unusual effect of contours not matching up and a quiet B road appearing to become a dual carriageway! There was plenty of snow on the ground still, and a new recruit in the form of Mr. Snowman joined the club. Unfortunately, due to his medical conditions (he's very heat sensitive and only has limited mobility), he had to stay in the forest and so will be no use in beating Oxford at Varsity in a few weeks' time. Synonymous with CUOC training, there was of course plenty of cake for the train journey back!
View More Photos

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!).