Despite Nick's depressing pre-race talk (involving contingency plans for finding random Swedish people to ring his mobile if you wandered off map), everyone managed to get round their course safely.
CUOC continued our domination of the Women’s competitions, yet again taking a clean sweep of the podium (for the 3rd year in a row). Katrin was very pleased to not be 3rd yet again, so instead decided to win, by over 3 minutes. Carrie & Jess completed the podium, and in the process, CUOC’s scoring A-team.
After Nick’s bold prediction that a "certain member of the GB talent squad should win in just under an hour", he was proved wrong as an ex-member of the fabled GB Start Squad proceeded to win in 53:42, claiming the win by 37 seconds. However, Oxford’s 4 counter unfortunately was just a little too good, meaning Oxford took the Men’s A win by 10 minutes. (Everyone was shown up by local boy Kalle Bergman though, who stormed round the 8.4km course in 42 minutes..!!)
The Men’s B team scorers of Joe Hobbs, Miranda Leaf & Andy Strakova won by default after Oxford’s 3rd runner never got on his plane. HQ joined the exclusive 200-club and getting his money’s worth out in the forest, coming in 6 minutes before the 4 hour disqualification limit.
A map mix up at the start meant CUOC winning the previously unintended Men’s C competition and Natalie suddenly finding herself on a much longer course than expected. However she coped admirably, getting round in just over 100 minutes.
Since the Oxford girls would have to improve their times by 10 x the improvement required from the CUOC boys (25 mins vs. 2.5 mins), plus the CUOC individual wins and in all the B & C competition, we can feel happy with our day’s work and claim the ‘overall’ win.
The CUOC team of James, Katrin & Matthew also won the "semi-serious" Varsity relays, by 8 minutes from JOK and crushed Oxford by 20 minutes.
Post-race banquet and party was a great success, the team partying hard until 3:30am in the morning. There will be quite a few tired faces on the planes home tomorrow afternoon...
Posted using Eduroam at Stockholm Arlanda Airport
A full report of all the whole week's activities and gossip, including pictures, will be posted after the journal has been presented to those at the AGM.
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