Essex Summer Midweek Series 2025

24th Feb 25

Series Commentary:

We had 8 races, 4 hosted by HAVOC and 4 by SOS.  Each event had two courses, long and short, and this whole series wouldn’t exist without the hard work of the race organisers, who this year were: Colin & Lyn West, David Float, Kevin Machin, Seb Parris, Eddie Banks, Josh Jenner, John Allen & Tim Hull, and Colin Jackson.  Thank you all.  Thanks also to the SOS series co-ordinator – Dean Pepper.  His efforts in getting organisers and planners, sending round flyers and chasers were invaluable in ensuring the success of the series.

Once again, we used MapRun to host the events, removing the need to put out physical controls (mostly!), and allowing you to see your and other runners’ routes straight after your run.  For the most part this proved to work well, just a few issues with GPS reception in some of the wooded areas, but even there we had over 95% accuracy.  Such issues can normally be resolved after the event, and we hope that the benefits of MapRun outweigh those odd problems.

We saw quite a bit of off-road running in the series, as we tried to use woods, parks and trails as much as possible as the evenings are light and the ground generally dry.  We had exclusively off-road events at Danbury Common and Thorndon, and significant areas of the courses at Norsey Woods and Harold Wood were also off-road.  Many of the other events were hybrid as well, with both on and off-road sections.  SOS used full orienteering maps for a couple of the races to give us all better detail for running – this lack of detail on the Open Orienteering Map can cause issues in navigation and route planning!  We tried the pseudo style for the Stock race – potentially clearer in the woods, but maybe less so on the streets (and of course, still not much detail in the woods!).

There was a variety of lengths and difficulties of course, fastest finish times on the Short ranging from 23.24 (Great Notley) to 38.40 (Harold Wood), and on the Long from 35.38 (Great Notley) to 57.07 (Harold Wood).

We had 56 different runners on the Short, and 64 on the Long.  As some people ran both courses, there is a degree of duplication there, but we did have 102 unique runners.  Of these, we had six people running “On the Night” in all 8 races – well done to Chris Prince, Dean Pepper, Kevin Machin, David Float, Veronica Machin and Colin Jackson.  As you know, we give a 15 point bonus at each event, to people running on the night, to encourage participation and reward the efforts of the planners/organisers.  On the Night also gives an opportunity for socialising and comparing routes with other runners of course. 

All the races had an Anytime catch up period of two weeks, allowing runners who couldn’t make the race to still score points in the league.  There is a penalty applied, as runners can see the course and plan their routes before running.  In total, with those Anytime runs included, we had 126 runs on Short and 185 on Long.  This is well up on last year, and averages 38.87 runs per event.  We had a range of ages, from M/W14 to M75.  M55 had 12 different runners, and W50 also had 12.  Eleven different running and orienteering clubs were represented at least once.  HWRC (27), SOS (19), and HAVOC (17) being the most prolific.  Don’t forget that if you are affiliated to BOF (generally through an orienteering club) then you benefit from reduced entry fees, so it is worth considering joining a club.  Also, from January 2026, BOF are removing their insurance cover for non-members at events, so non-members will now be personally liable for any claims against them (clubs and members still covered).  More details of how to join HAVOC can be found here.  We had 46 women and 56 men running in at least one race.

For the summer series we take the top six results from the 8 races, and 23 runners over the two courses had at least that number of runs.  No surprises that the podium positions in both leagues come from those runners! 

Short course

The first event, at Great Notley, was won by Eddie Banks, but that was his only score of the Short course series.  Similarly, Jackie Sibthorp ran the Anytime at Danbury Common and scored 100 points, for her one short course score of the series.  Colin Jackson competed in every event, and scored his highest at Stock and Rayne, but on both occasions was beaten by the top two on the podium, and ultimately, could only manage third for the series.

So, it was down to Dave Game and Marc Owen.  And it was close! The first four times they raced in the same race, it was two all in higher scores.  They both missed an event, Marc at Harold Wood, where Dave scored the maximum points.  Dave was missing from the Danbury common scores, but Marc could only manage 80 points at that one.  He won the last two events at Colchester and Thorndon, but it was the On-The-Night bonus which proved crucial, Dave getting an extra 15 points there to run out victor by six points. 

Congratulations Dave!

Long Course

The first five races of the eight race series all went to different winners.  The sixth was a draw with Seb Parris and Paul Beckett both getting an identical handicapped time to wine.  That was Seb’s second win of the series, but he didn’t appear at the last two races, and that left the series title door open.  In third place, Chris Prince competed in all 8 events, for a full On-the-night bonus.  Despite some speedy raw times, he couldn’t quite get to the top of the table on handicap.  He was able to drop his bad score from Great Notley, but just couldn’t score the really high points this series.

The top two were close.  Seb had led all season, but missing those last two races proved crucial.  Paul scored on a catch-up at Colchester, and made this one of his top 6 scores.  He then raced round his local Thorndon Park to top score and pile the pressure on.  He had taken the lead, with just the Anytime period to go.  A good run from Seb, even with the Anytime penalty would be enough to drop his lowest score of the six runs and therefore jump back ahead.  But, the two week period came and went, without Seb attempting the course, and so Paul holds on to the win for this year.
Congratulations Paul.

Full results of every race, can be found below.  In addition, you can also get maps, directions and instructions if you want to run any of the courses on MapRun.  They are all open and available to run. 

We are now planning the next series, to take place in the winter, mostly after the clocks have gone back, so starting late October.  This series is to be score based, so we can make better use of the urban streets, and to give you an extra challenge of planning your route to collect as many points as you can within the time limit.  This also has the benefit of ensuring we know when to expect competitors back to the finish, so we can make sure everyone is back safely in the dark. 

But, to give you something to do in that two and a half month gap between now and that series starting, HAVOC will be putting on a Twilight series, starting after the summer holidays, on September 10th.  Two of the events will also be score based, to get you in practice for that winter series, but will also add a few wrinkles into the normal score format!  The variations are all predicated on the requirement for the course to favour the better runners (or maybe the better planners!) rather than leaving it up to luck or chance to score well. 

If you have any comments on the series then please let me know ().  As mentioned earlier, all of these series cannot run without the efforts of volunteers to organise and plan individual events, so please consider that for the next series.  Let me or Dean know so that we can fit you into the schedule.

Thanks again for running in the events this summer – I sincerely hope you enjoyed them.  I hope you have a good break, and look forward to seeing you all again for the Twilight series in September.

David

Final winners board for 2025:

Long Course:

Short Course:

The Essex Summer Midweek Series will again be run in 2025.  This will consist of 8 evening O events.  Terrain will be a mixture of urban streets, parks and woodland, footpaths and trails.

Series flyer.

Points will be awarded based on finishing times adjusted using an age/gender handicap system.  Each missed or incorrect control will incur a 5 minutes penalty.  Best 6 results from the series will count.   On-the-night bonus of 15 points per event for those running on the night, opposed to MapRun catchup.  5 min penalty for Anytime.  A second run on any particular course will not count for scoring purposes.

Full results will be emailed and published on the SOS and HAVOC websites. 

Entry fees, per event Senior (member) £4, Senior (non-member) £5, Junior £2

Golden Ticket (entry to all events in the series) - Senior (member) £22, Senior (non-member) £28,  Junior £11

Note:  This series will be using the latest version of the MapRun software, to enable use of features and scoring that have been introduced.  Therefore, if you are not using the latest version of the software, please update to ensure that there are no issues when it comes to the event.

Links to details/results for the events are shown in the table below.

Essex Summer Midweek Series 2025

Guidelines for each event:

- Short (c3-3.5km straight line) and Long (c5-6km straight line) or another format if it works better for an area (e.g. Short and Long or Combined Score)
- Starts from 6.30pm to 7.30pm, courses close 9pm
- Start location should be a pub or similar
- If possible, events are set up on MapRun to allow for on the night analysis, as well as Anytime Catch up for those not able to attend on the night
- As the events will take place in the light summer evenings, more use of parks, woods, footpaths and trails are anticipated, alongside sections of urban street running.
- Usual format of fire hydrants, supplemented by other road furniture, and/or homemade hydrant signs where courses would benefit from not only using hydrants (to increase route choice for example).

Defending champions from 2024 are:

Short Course

Long Course