Briony part of winning team at JIRCs
The Junior Inter-Regional Competition trophy, took place last weekend in Sennybridge near Brecon in South Wales.
Briony ran the 2nd leg in the relays and the Scottish girls team won.
Briony has written a report of her trip below.
Briony was 5th out of 33 in the W14 class on the individual day.
At the beginning of June I received a letter from Maureen Brown the Scottish Junior Team Manager. It said that I had been selected to represent the SOA in the Junior Inter-Regional Championships. I was one of twenty four Scottish juniors; four in each age class.
Mum came up with various plans as to how to get me to one of the two minibuses travelling down, one from Aberdeen, the other from Edinburgh. The final plan was for me to get the ten past eight train from Oban to Glasgow. I was met there by Robert Patterson (an M16 who ran M18 both days as there aren’t enough 18s) and his dad. We then went to Tisos and had lunch there with Thomas Wilson and his dad. Afterwards Robert’s dad drove us three down to Gretna which was the rendezvous point for the minibuses. I jumped on the north bus to join Jennifer and Bronwyn and we drove all the way down to Coalport YH at Ironbridge in Shropshire where we stayed the night.
The next morning we had a two and a half hour drive to the event. I was glad to be on the north bus as the south bus got lost a few times even though there were two Scotjos coaches on it.
As we drove into the event we could see army vehicles and army guys with guns and camouflage clothes. This was Sennybridge Army Camp. The terrain was very open and so fast running although there were a few blocks of open woodland. I had a late start and so had lots of time to cheer people past the spectator control and also see people out on their courses. As it was an army area there were many small craters and used cartridges dotted around.It was a scorching day, hot for standing around but boiling for running. Because of this Maureen and the other drivers were handing out drinks at the spectator control which was about 1-1.5km from the finish. I was pretty pleased with my run. I made one mistake coming out of my number six. It was in some woodland and I didn’t orientate my map after I’d dibbed so I came out at the wrong angle and got a bit confused but I knew I needed to go up the hill so I did slightly slowly and things started making sense. If I hadn’t been confused and slow, I probably would have been third maybe above. I was only eight seconds behind Jenny who was third. It was all very close. I was 30.03 and fifth, Bronwyn was 31.24 and tenth.
We arrived at the army barracks at five and had supper immediately. After this there was a Lagganlia meeting where we met Nev Myers the lead coach who told us a bit about what we’d do and what was expected of us. Then we went to our dormitory. Scottish girls were sharing with the Welsh girls. We had one building which was just one room with bunk beds. There was then a prize giving and we applauded our good results: two thirds, two seconds and a first.
There was then a friendship relay around the barracks which was a bit of a failure as many people didn’t want to partake. After that I went for a shower which was funny. One shower block had been assigned to the JIRCs girls. There were two rooms and I went into one with Jenny and Bronwyn. There was a bench along one side and on the opposite side walls jutting out making cubicles but there weren’t shower curtains.
On Sunday the sun was still sweltering. There were four boys teams and four girls teams all consisting of a 14, a 16 and an 18. The 16 boys started ten minutes before the 16 girls. In my team were Rona Lindsay (16 from ESOC) and Kirstin Maxwell (18 from RR). When I saw Rona at the spectator control I went into the waiting pen. I had 14 controls and for the first five I was just in front so was the one reading the map most. After five, which I mucked up a wee bit but I took someone with me, there were six in front and it was a case of checking the map and following. I got into third quickly but went a different way from ten to eleven which was nice. The pressure was off me for a few seconds however they all overtook me while I was climbing a fence but I managed to regain my position of third. When I got back Maureen said to me that she was sure we were going to win. “Kirstin is much better than any of the North West girls.” She was right,
Scotland won the relays for the first time ever, we won the girls collectively and were second overall with North West only six points ahead.I got home at 11.30 on Sunday night after Mum picked me up from Glasgow. It was worth it.
Briony
Full report on the 2010 JIRCs on the SOA website
Posted on 06th Jul 10
by Paul Frost - Website, Membership, Publicity
JIRCs 2010 Winning girls
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