Captain’s Blog – December 2007

Happy New Year to all CHIG members (and anyone else who happens to be reading)!

Compass Sport Trophy and New Members

We’ve had a fantastic response this year and will be fielding a crack team of 30 runners – a 50% increase on last year. Half of this increase comes from the Campbell family who have defected from CLOK at the eleventh hour. Robert is the son of CHIG stalwarts Robin and Ruby, so we’ll have three generations of Campbells competing for CHIG.
A warm welcome to Robert, Susan, Alice, Caitlin and Dylan.
An equally warm welcome to Jason and Owen Haigh who are also new members and running for CHIG at Brandon.

New Map

Remapping of our recently rediscovered area to the west of Broxbourne seems to be progressing well. I’d just about recovered from the marathon two weeks before to join the map testing team on a cold Saturday morning. John Pearce had produced tailor-made “control-free” courses for everyone and my hour or so run took me through a mixture of some great, runnable, Epping-like beech forest as well as some slightly grottier parts of Wormley and Derry’s Woods. Runners were encouraged to record their feedback on the mapping of the control sites and anything else that “didn’t quite fit”. Other club members test-ran different parts of the area further north – it’s a big area! The grand re-opening regional event is planned for this November and should attract a large turnout.

After the run, it was back to the Cheetham’s for mince pies, mulled wine and a fiendishly difficult treasure hunt challenge on a specially prepared map incorporating part of Mardley Heath. In the end, the Green family out-witted the Jenner/West/Cheetham team (by actually completing the course!) and took home some more wine! Many thanks to the Cheethams for hosting, putting on the competition and supplying the prizes.

Notable Perfomances

DVO Londshaw National, 9th Dec

Robin Campbell 3rd M70L

Trent Park Score Event, Boxing Day

Christmas Congratulations to Mark Ford and Pete Cheetham who won the Long (60min) and Short (45min) courses respectively!
(Mark is credited with joint first place on points alone in the results – even though Graham Parkes (HH) was nearly a minute quicker!)
Both Mark and Pete suffered a 20 point penalty for being late (though only by 4 seconds for Mark and 3 seconds for Pete!)

Ash Ranges Regional, 30th Dec

• Jeff Green 2nd M35L
• Ray Weekes 1st M55S
• Tim Pribul 3rd M55S
• Robin Campbell 1st M70L
• Carol Pearce 1st W60L