Last weekend, I went with the South West Squad to the Junior Inter-Regional Championships (JIRCs) in the Forest of Dean and the Mendips. We had a very successful weekend coming 3rd out of the 12 regional squads.
The individual race was held at Mallards Pike in the Forest of Dean, which was also the area used for the Caddihoe Chase last year. It’s a mostly quite flat area with lots of ditches separated into blocks by large tracks and smaller paths, so your attack point into controls in the ditches was very important, as counting the ditches one by one was much slower and inefficient. Deciding your route choice of whether you’d go round the paths or cut straight through the terrain was also important. I had a mostly good run, with no mistakes and good pace up until 10 and 11 where my bearing was slightly off on both of them, losing about 1:30. I finished in 3rd place with 33:14 so I’m happy.
Routegadget: 2024-09-28 JIRCS (routegadget.co.uk)
This is a good result, 3rd out of the 40 best orienteers in the country in your age class is very impressive.
Finlay hasn’t mentioned that he was part of the winning mens relay team. Well done!
Wish I had taken a photo of the finish.
Brilliant result for the SW squad - coming 3rd after the orienteering powerhouses of Scotland and Yorkshire.
Surely this deserves promotion to the front page of the QO website? I hope Mark Goddard does not object to my inclusion of his photos of Finlay’s acheivement. JOG is very proud of the major success of one of its members. There are others in the pipeline!
Brilliant results Finley, well done and well deserved.
I have just looked at Finley’s GPS track on Routegadget - very impressive, clean, run compared with the other GPS competitor! Good use of paths and contour features as attack points. He will be bringing his awards and maps to JOG next Saturday.
