HAVOC/SOS Midweek Summer Street O league 2023 HAVOC/SOS Midweek Summer league 2023

31st Jul 23

Series summary:

Thanks to everyone who raced in any of the events in the 2023 joint HAVOC/SOS street O series this summer.  All the events were line events this season, with the regular Long and Short course options.  Mostly we had winning times in the 40-50 minute range, although a couple of outliers were longer or shorter than this, as the planner tried to make sure the courses visited the best or most challenging areas.  We took in the full range of both on street and off road running, and experienced parks, footpaths, woods and fields, as well as hills and even cliffs.  We had some interesting locations by the sea, in the gorges and fully within the parks of Chelmsford amongst others.

The move to mainly basing runs at pubs helped with the social aspect of the series, assisting in post race refreshment and analysis.  SOS started to embrace the MapRun format, which helps with this analysis, and hopefully that will become more of the norm in future series.

The addition of an on the night bonus seems to have encouraged a few additional runs, and although it didn’t make a difference to the top places in the leagues, certainly it had an effect on scoring further down the tables.

Thanks to all who planned and organised an event – Chris Prince, Marc Owen, Chris Childs, Paul Beckett, Colin & Lyn West, David Float, Colin Jackson, John Allen, Graham Batty and Jackie Sibthorp.  Without these volunteers we could not run these events.

Racesignup is now fully accepted as the way to organise entries and collect monies.  We continued with trying to make this available as late as possible before the events, and even offered some entry on the night if maps were available.

We offered a 100 point bonus for running an Essex MapRun during the series, and this was taken up by sixteen runners.  As we have now got an established set of MapRun courses available, and usage seems to be picking up, we will retire this bonus for the next series.

In total, we had 33 entries for the short course, and 52 for the long.  This includes people who ran in both series.  There were 76 runs overall on the Short, including MapRun catchups, 168 on the Long.  Congratulations to Lorna Pettifer, David Float and Dean Pepper on the Long, who all ran (or planned/organised) in all eight events.

The final league tables were calculated based on the best six scores from the eight races.

On the short course, it was close between David Game and Melanie Sirrett.  It was 4-2 to Melanie in head to head battles, but David won both of the other two races outright, and takes the overall series victory by 17 points.  Both runners gained their MapRun bonus.  In all we had five different winners over the eight races.  The final podium spot for the series went to Colin Jackson.

All of the top 5 runners on the Long course took home the MapRun bonus.  Paul Beckett won two events, hosted a third, and was within two pints of the win at two other events, cementing his victory.  Lorna Pettifer took second place overall, and David Float just edged out Chris Childs by a point for third place.  Allen Smalls was the most consistent – four wins from his four starts!

Thanks everyone, for making the series a success.

The final standings were:

We are currently planning the next winter series, which will start towards the middle of October.  That is before the clocks change, so grab an early start for a light advantage!  After that we will have the rest of the series in the dark, in total five events each for SOS and HAVOC with a mid season break for Christmas.  Don’t forget to look out your headtorch and make sure all is in order before the season starts!  If you can volunteer to organise and plan an event then please consider doing so – Chris Childs and David Float are again co-ordinating.  Look out for further details on both the HAVOC and SOS websites.

The Summer Midweek Street O league will be run over the spring/summer of 2023. It will be in the same format as last year's series, and will consist of 8 evening events.  They will be mostly street O line events, but can be any format/terrain, and will try to utilise some off road areas of parks, footpaths and woods.

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.  Full results will be emailed and published on the SOS and HAVOC websites.  Links to details/results for the events are shown in the table below.

It is hoped that courses will be available after the event date for two weeks, on MapRun, for points in the league, subject to an Anytime penalty of 5 minutes.  There will be a 15 point bonus for each run attended on the night, and a 100 point bonus for an Essex MaprRun during the series (not valid for the Anytime run period for events).

SOS/HAVOC Summer Series 2023