HAVOC win GLOSS 2024

19th Jul 24

HAVOC have won the GLOSS series, 2024.  That is our seventh win in a row.  We have held the trophy since we first won in 2017.

This year’s series was probably one of our most dominant wins.  We won every one of the three events.  We were 5 points clear of our nearest rivals, SLOW.

Let’s take a quick look back at event 3, Bedfords Park, hosted by HAVOC.

We went into the event having nearly wrapped up the series with two wins from the first two events in the west.  Entries were low, and we had the only full team of 6 or more runners for most of the week leading up to the event.  But in the end we had full teams from CHIG, DFOK, LOK and SLOW, so we needed to ensure we didn’t slip up too badly to ensure victory in the series.

And, to be fair it didn’t look great in the immediate post race analysis, as our runners reported struggles in completing Janet’s tricky courses.  The results showed Guy, Charlie, Hugo all missing controls and not logging a result.  Andrew Welsh, Jenny Gebka, Mike Muggeridge, Graham Batty, Dale Bennett and Barbara Beckett all scored a time longer than target.  Anna Murray completed, but only got a default score. That’s ten runners!  Any other team would have been wiped out by this stage, but for the third event in a row we had the largest number of runners of any club, and were able to withstand these setbacks.

Indeed, if we flip to the top of the table things start to look a little better, and for the second event in the row, HAVOC had the best performing runner on the day.  This time it was Chris Shaw who had the best ratio of performance to target time of all runners, and set us off to the best possible start with 100 points.  Zbig Gebka scored his first points of the series, with a 6th placed finish.  Two places further back, David Float weighed in with 95 points.  Running in his first GLOSS race for team HAVOC, Ted Coday sped round the GLOSS course in 4th place overall, good enough for 14th on handicap.  Ted was the 4th highest ranked runner on the day, so to get such a high handicapped placing is an incredible effort.  We just needed two more runners at this stage, and Colin Jackson and Paul Beckett gave us the points we needed to guarantee victory. 

No other teams had more than 2 runners in the top 18, by the time Paul’s score was recorded, so it was a comprehensive victory.  We are not always so dominant in our home event – the last couple we have lost.

As a remider, here were the reports from the other two events:

GLOSS series event 2 – LOK hosted event at Cranford Country Park, Sunday June 30th.

I said at the beginning of the series that HAVOC would be up against it, with the first two events being in the West.  This one was even more inconvenient, being right next to Heathrow airport. Sandwiched between planes landing, and the M4, it was surprisingly quiet in the actual park.  We had cooler weather for this one, and a few showers as well.

What looked to a flat, fairly uninspiring area, wasn’t perhaps as bad as first thought, with enough woodland and patches of trees, to mostly hide the controls, and catch runners out if they tried to go through the woods (yep, that was me!) instead of along the paths, and give a little bit of route choice.  Maybe some of the controls could have been not quite so visible, mostly being on paths, and some could be seen from the previous control.

We had got most of our team in early, and the week passed with just the hosts LOK and challengers, SLOW, joining us on at least 6 runners.  SLOW looked to have the most runners, but a couple of late entries for HAVOC, and some no shows for SLOW saw us with the biggest team for the second week running.  An impressive feat considering where the events were held.

Last week we suffered from a number of poor runs, populating the lower half of the scoreboard.  This week, with fewer runners we couldn’t allow that to happen if we were to maintain our challenge.  Chris Prince was again our fastest runner, completing the GLOSS course in a shade over 20 mins, for the fourth best overall time of the day.  But, with the course times being so short (it was only a 3km course, with 10m of climb) the mathematics were again against him, and he scored a “just longer than target time” for 33rd handicapped placing.  However, this week, the unhandicapped runners, including our own Anna Murray, were placed 44th, and we had no runners below that.  Mike Muggeridge and Jenny Gebka also just missed their target times this week.  Taking less than a minute longer than Chris, was Guy Lidbury, but he suffers the same high handicap disadvantage, and was out of our top 6.  As was Zbig Gebka, in the top half of runners round the course, but just outside of our club’s top 6.

So, let’s flip to the top of the table.  With the best ratio of run time to target time, of the whole field, and scoring 100 points for the club, was Chloe Fowler.  A fantastic achievement – I don’t have full stats, but I don’t think anyone has achieved that in the last 6 years for HAVOC.

LOK had a runner in fourth.  Colin Jackson on the back of his second last week, was sixth this time.  SLOW then got their first runner home.  But 8th and 9th both went to HAVOC, with David Float and Andrew Welsh, giving HAVOC four of the top ten.

SLOW and LOK would only manage one more runner each, before we completed our team, first Dale Bennett and then Graham Batty getting in the top 20, and giving HAVOC a comprehensive victory.

LOK would wind up second, with SLOW in third, just 10 points behind.

GLOSS series event 1 – MV hosted event at Reigate Priory Park, Sunday June 23rd.

The sun is out – it must be time for GLOSS!  Every recent GLOSS race seems to have been held in hot weather, and this week was no exception – the first race in Reigate Priory set in very warm and sunny conditions.  However, it was only the first run across the open fields to the forest, and the quick dash to the finish that exposed runners to the sun, the rest of the course was in the cooler shade of the forest.  The course packed in quite a bit of climb in the fairly compact length, and this led to the winning time being about 25% longer than the GLOSS target winning time.  However, slightly more challenging navigational courses have traditionally favoured HAVOC, and with the bumper entry that we had achieved, things were set up for us to do well.

Other clubs had a late flurry of entries though, so in the end there were six clubs fielding at least six entries, and it was going to be a battle to score well.  HAVOC had the second highest ranked starter in the field – Chris Prince, and he delivered, with the second fastest time over the GLOSS course – just 20 seconds behind the winner.  However, such a high handicap makes it difficult to get a GLOSS score, and Chris would finish well down the field.  It is sometimes better to have a lower handicap, but still run well.  Looking down the finish list, the first two runners with a handicap of less than 1000, were both from HAVOC, David Float and Colin Jackson, in 18th and 22nd places on the day.  Once the handicap ratios are applied that boosted Colin into second on the day, and David third.

So, a great start, but not to be outdone, the next two runners, and three of the next 5 were all from SLOW, so they took an early lead in the race to six finishers.  And HAVOC were going to start losing runners!  Jenny mispunched, Simon struggled to match his high handicap, Guy couldn’t find one of the controls and watched his challenge disappear, Paul and Barbara both failed to reach their target time.  Susan and Charlie don’t have a BOF ranking with two scores yet, so could only get a default score for completing.  Zbig made a few errors, and along with Graham and Mike, was just longer than target time.  It just goes to show how a big entry is needed to protect the club from these type of things.   Ten runners wiped off the potential scoreboard.  The good thing is, we had 17 this week!  With last year’s star performer, Andrew, getting on the top 10, and Chris Shaw taking advantage of his relatively low handicap with an excellent steady run, we had four of the top 12 runners on the day.  16th and 17th saw us home as Chloe and Dale rounded out our top 6 and left HAVOC as the first team to collect six runners, and take the win. Our seventh place was Chris Prince, and if one of the top 6 had messed up, then we would have just been beaten by hosts MV for the win.

So, MV took second, with SLOW just behind in third.  DFOK, SO and SN all had full teams of at least six runners, and take the next three spots.  LOK could only field five runners on the day, so drop down into seventh.  HH and CHIG had even less runners and have probably already lost their chance of winning the series.

Series summary

So, that was it – three wins from three events.  It was left to the other clubs to fight for the minor places, and SLOW placed second, ahead of a three way points tie for third, which goes to a tiebreak, and saw DFOK 3rd, LOK 4th and MV 5th.

And just to show some of the other stats for GLOSS 2024:

-              There were 16 people who made all three races.  Of those, over half, nine, were from HAVOC!  The full list is: Mike Muggeridge, Colin Jackson, Andrew Welsh, Nikoly Yanev (SLOW), Dale Bennett, Anna Maria Yaneva (SLOW), Jenny Gebka, Anthony Flick (LOK), Andrew Pitcher (DFOK), David Float, Zbig Gebka, Guy Lidbury, Ian Byford (HH), Catherine Galvin (LOK), Graham Batty, Vesela Chokoeva (SLOW)

-              HAVOC had two of the course handicap highest scorers – Chloe Fowler at Cranford, and Chris Shaw at Bedfords.  Colin Jackson at Reigate was second.

-              HAVOC had the most runners completing (compared to all other clubs) at every race

-              There were 7 runners who scored in all three events.  This is difficult for HAVOC runners, as only the top six runners for each club score at each event, but we had two this year – Colin and David.  And if we look at the table of top individual points scorer over the series, HAVOC hold the top two slots – David with 286 and Colin with 281.  Next best was a SLOW runner on 259.
 

Our final participation figures were:

So, 20 unique runners, 10 of whom scored in at least one race.  9 runners appeared in every race.

It remains to be seen if we get more than three events for the next series.  SLOW and LOK are already signed up to host events, so the prospect is good.  Can we continue our stranglehold over the red bus?  Let’s hope so!

But for now – well, let’s just enjoy another victory, and another year as custodians of the trophy. 

GLOSS champions again!