A cooling wind made competing in this year’s Hardy Relays, organised, as ever by Wessex Orienteers, a relatively pleasant experience after the recent heatwave. This year’s race took place in Littledown and King’s Parks, Bournemouth. The race used the Harris relay format in which each runner in a team of three had to visit all of 5 spine controls with the remaining 20 controls split between team members as they felt best. Solo runners were able to compete in a 45 min Score event.
Thanks to much hard work by Denise Mullins Sarum was able to field no less than three teams, despite some last minute reshuffling to cope with late injuries. With Wessex and Wimborne fielding single teams only this was a good turnout by the Club.
The strongest team, on paper, was Sarum Scorchers, comprising Dave Mullins, Dan Cope and Paul Lane. But it was the veterans who produced the best result for Sarum with Sarum Just4Fun (Denise Mullins, Joan Hambleton and Dave Battison) completing in a time of 27:34 to regain the Vets Trophy for the Club. Unfortunately Dave had to depart before the Trophy presentation and is missing from the Trophy photo. Sarum Scarum (Charlotte Thornton, Liz Yeadon and Peter Hambleton) came home in 38:14. The main Trophy was won by Wimborne Wanderers (20:54) ahead of home team Wessex Raiders (24:58). Unfortunately Sarum Scorchers missed out one control to gain a penalty that pushed them into last place. One shouldn’t apportion blame but one member missed one control – for the second time in a summer relay event, much to his mortification.
Max Duncan, Alan Yeadon and Ricky Thorton all took on the score event with Max taking an excellent 6th place with 570 points. Well done Max.
Many thanks to Wessex for hosting the event, to Denise for pulling our teams together and Dave Battison for persuading the Littledown Centre Manager to allow us free parking beyond the usual 3 hour limit. Unfortunately your reporter had already paid extra using the required ‘phone app! Still it was nice to have a picnic lunch in the sun with the usual orienteering camaraderie.
Full results can be found here.