News from The JK Easter Event
There was plenty of excitement (and mud!) generated over the four day event by the 15 Moravians who travelled down to the Midlands.
You can see all the results from this page.
Here is a summary from Eddie
15 Moravians made the long treck to the English Midlands for the JK Trophy, considered Britain’s foremost annual event. We returned with great results far above our size. Indeed the Scots in general came away with a huge tally of medals despite the terrain being totally alien to anything we have here.
The sprint event was a very interesting University at Loughborough. Not overly difficult, but consistently requiring concentration, a bit like Sin City in Lossiemouth. It was far too much for my brain.
Our Chairman Andrew however had a stormer. After a massive collision knee to knee collision with an elite guy coming round a bend the other way, he picked himself up and won the bronze, just 8 seconds off gold – he would clearly have won without the collision.. By prizegiving time he was unable to walk.
Isobel won the first of her 3 silvers of the weekend in W20E
Day 2 was a middle race and day 3 a long one, with the 2 days adding together for the overall trophy.
The area chosen was unsuited to middle distance and huge amounts of rain all through the winter and early spring had made the forest very muddy indeed. Amazingly the car parking was quite dry and Saturday’s weather beautifully springlike. The mud was really quite epic with controls in marshes very intimidating for many. 2 controls on my course were completely invisible – I had assumed that the kites had fallen in the mud, but in fact they were still hanging but so plastered in black mud that not a spot of orange or white were visible.
Three Moravians podiumed. Finlay won the long to overturn his 3rd place after the middle and win the gold. Isobel got her second silver and Anna came 3rd in the long to rise from 6th in the middle to a bronze medal.
Sophie had an excellent 9th place in the middle in the highly competitive W16 field, and Eddie overturned a poor middle in 10th with 2nd in the long, to finish in 4th. Kate had a really good JK as a first year running elite. She top tenned both days, being the 5th placed Brit in the long.
The relays however were stunning. A beautiful Peak District area, nicely technical and very varied for a relay and with no mud.
We had 2 Moravian teams whilst Isobel got her third silver running Women’s open with Edinburgh University.
Sophie, Anna and Kate joined up to run the Women 48- (i.e. total age of 48 or lower). Sophie had an outstanding start handing over to Anna in 3rd place only 37 seconds down. Anna stormed through handing over to Kate in the lead. Kate did not have her best run, and turned her ankle over early on, but came through hanging onto the bronze medal for a great team effort.
The boy’s team had to run the Men’s short class and should have consisted of Michael, Andrew and Finlay. However after his collision in the sprint, Andrew had to be substituted, and I got the job. I assumed that this was the death knell on a medal, but Michael stormed round the first leg coming in in 4th less than a minute down. I only just made it to the start on time and ran as fast as my aging legs would go. I managed to only drop just over 4 minutes and handed over to Finlay in 8th leaving him just over 4 minutes behind 3rd. Finlay duly ran the 2nd fastest leg of the day to bring us up to a bronze medal, the most special bronze I have ever won.
