HAVOC/SOS Midweek Summer Street O league 2024 HAVOC/SOS Midweek Summer league 2024

18th Mar 24

Series commentary

The Anytime periods for the last two runs have now completed, so we can now announce the winners of the 2024 HAVOC/SOS Midweek Summer Series.

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: Chris Prince, Colin & Lyn West, Paul Beckett. Dean Pepper & Chris Childs, Seb Parris, John Allen & Tim Hull, Graham Batty and Kevin Machin.  Thank you all.  Thanks also to the SOS series co-ordinator – Chris Childs.  His efforts in getting organisers and planners, sending round flyers and chasers and making sure the results were accurate were invaluable in ensuring the success of the series.  I believe that Chris is stepping down from the role for the next series, so I hope you will all join me in thanking him for all his efforts.

Once again, we used MapRun to host the events, removing the need to put out physical controls, and allowing you to see your’s and other runners’ routes straight after your run.  For the most part this proved to work well, just a few issues with GPS reception.  Such issues can normally be solved 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, including an almost exclusively forest event at Highwoods, an extensive score section in Gloucester Park, and some long visits to Ingrebourne Hill in Rainham.    Various other events had route choices to cover footpaths and urban parkland to break up the street running.

There was a variety of lengths of course, fastest finish times on the Short ranging from 25.16 (Coggeshall) to 50.52 (Rainham), and on the Long from 35.35 (Coggeshall) to 57.50 (Gloucester Park).

We had 31 different runners on the Short, and 39 on the Long.  Of these, we had two people running “On the Night” in all 8 races – well done to Alan Sibthorp and Jackie Sibthorp.  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.

In total we had 59 runs on Short and 122 on Long.  We had a range of ages, from W10 to M85!  M55 and M75 being the most common, at 7 runners each.  Seven different running clubs were represented at least once.  SOS (26), HAVOC (16), and MEC (13) being the most prolific.  We had 24 women and 46 men running in at least one race.

For the summer series we take the top six results from the 8 races, and 12 runners over the two courses had at least that number of runs.  No surprises that the top positions in both leagues come from those runners!  Lyn West was the only runner who didn’t complete six runs but finished ahead of other runners who did.

Short course

We had four different runners winning at least one event.  Interestingly though, three of those only entered the event they won!  So, it was a runaway victory for Colin Jackson (HAVOC) who ran in 7 of the 8 (and did an Anytime catchup for the other), won five events, and finished just 23 points off the theoretical maximum of 720.  Runner-up was Alan Sibthorp, finishing every race with a consistent score of between 55 and 70 points.  Rounding out the podium positions was Barbara Beckett, who didn’t run in any of the events on the night, but did them all on Anytime catchup.

Long Course

The first four races all went to different winners, three of whom then took another race win as well.  With 100 points for organising/planning an event it was good to see that two of the top three places were organisers this time.  Interesting that On the Night Bonus points were crucial – the podium would have looked different without them and a number of positions further down the field were also directly affected.  In the end we had our closest fight yet for the series win, just 12 points separating the top 3.  Chris Prince led the table for most of the season, but missing the last two events (and not running catchups for them) proved critical, as he fell to third overall.  Consistent runs and a full complement of On the Night bonuses saw Jackie Sibthorp take second.  Retaining his title, Paul Beckett used a combination of planning an event, Anytime, and just enough On the Night runs to take the win, by just 10 points.  There was a chance for the positions at the top to change in that Anytime catchup period after the last races, but no runs were recorded, so the positions stand.

We are now planning the next series, to take place in the winter, after the clocks have gone back, so starting last week of October, early November.  As this is a while away, we will potentially have something a bit sooner – look out for a “twilight” series in September/October.  If you have any comments on the series then please let me know ().  As mentioned earlier, this 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 the SOS co-ordinator 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 next series.

David

The Summer Midweek Street O league will be run over the spring/summer of 2024. 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 for the final table.  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 however be a 15 point bonus for each run attended on the night, to encourage on the night runs and socialising.

Defending champions from last year are:

SOS/HAVOC Summer Series 2024