It was a weekend of ecstasy and agony for Moravian Orienteers as a large group of runners travelled to Kincraig for the Scottish Championships. This was the biggest turnout at these championships from the club for many years, and for some of the club’s newer members it was their first taste of a big event.

Almost 1000 runners converged on the hills above the Highland Wildlife Park for the individual races on Saturday, and Moravian’s main hope for silverware was in the M55 class where Eddie Harwood was the pre-race favourite. He did not disappoint, but the race went right to the wire, with Harwood just managing to squeeze out Yorkshireman Peter Haines to take the Scottish title by the tiniest of margins – just 15 seconds. Perhaps the performance of the day was from club newcomer Ian Howells who made a mockery of his inexperience to come third in the M45 short-distance class, having held the lead during the early stages. A very recent convert to the sport, Howells has progressed at an alarming rate, and once he gets up to full running fitness will definitely be a name to watch in the future. The standard of competition across the various age classes was very high, particularly amongst the older senior classes, but with all of Scotland’s top juniors at the event it also gave the club’s youngsters a chance to gauge their progress against Scotland’s best. Moravian’s top junior performer amongst their 13 junior runners was Johnstone MacPherson-Stewart who was running in the under-13s class. Johnstone was having an absolute flyer until a major navigational error lost him 5 minutes. There is no way to completely recover from an error of this magnitude in a junior race, so it was to his great credit that he managed to regain his concentration and keep up the pace in the latter stages of the race to finish 5th, just 1 second off coming 4th, and 3 minutes down on the winner.

The club had 3 senior teams and 3 junior teams entered in to the relay races near Loch Laggan on Sunday, but had a weakened line-up as Eddie Harwood was unavailable due to being the course planner. Despite one or two strong individual performances, with club novice Ian Howells again outstanding, none of the senior teams managed to get anywhere near the podium. But it could so easily have been different for the juniors. The “Moravian Harriers” team of Johnstone MacPherson-Stewart, Andrew Barr and Grant Welsh were all set to give it a right good go in the Under-15s relay. Andrew and Johnstone were in the team that came 2nd in last year’s British Championships under-13s relay, while the fast but less experienced Grant was running in his first relay race.

Johnstone flew out of the blocks, and hammered round what was quite a tricky first leg in 18 minutes to establish a 55-second lead. As he sprinted up the finish lane to roars of encouragement, the pressure was really on for young Grant who was running second leg. With such a big lead, and no other runners ahead of him, his navigation had to be spot on with nobody there to chase. Grant quickly composed himself and stormed through the first 4 controls to maintain the lead, but then made the sort of catastrophic error that just about every orienteer makes at some stage in his career. In his determination to keep up the pace he glanced at his map while holding it the wrong way up, and this led to a 180-degree error which completely undid all the hard work that had gone before. This was followed by another error and despite a good finish to the race he had lost about 26 minutes to leave his team down in 21st place. However, this wasn’t going to stop Andrew Barr giving it everything on the last leg which was run over a technically harder course over some strength-sapping rough and marshy terrain. But a storming run, with no real navigation errors, saw Andrew pass 8 other runners to finish in an excellent 13th place against much older and more experienced opposition. These young lads are still eligible to run in this standard of relay competition for another 2 years, so with another year’s experience under their belts, who knows what they might achieve next year? 

The next big competition for the club is in August when 4000 runners are expected to compete in the Scottish 6-Day Festival based in Perth. But closer to home, Moravian are staging the latest of their Saturday-morning series of events on Saturday 30th May at Nairn East Beach. The event, which is aimed at beginners, is at 10am and the parking for the event is at the Eastern end of the caravan park near the harbour. Entry costs £3 for adults and £2 for juniors and the organisers are very keen to encourage families to come and take part as a group. For more information contact Steve and Penelope Smirthwaite on 01667 455431.