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.