Sheffield City Chase

Graham Gristwood and Rachael Elder win the Sheffield City Chase!

On Saturday Sheffield Uni Orienteering Club hosted the final race in the Nopesport Urban League. The chase involves two orienteering races, a prologue followed by a final in which your start time is decided by time taken in the prologue. First to cross the finish line wins!
Some good planning created a challenging event for all involved. The prologue started on an estate (where reading control descriptions was important if you wanted to be on the right side of fences) before heading out into the city centre to finish outside city hall. The final started in the centre and covered most of the busy shopping area of Sheffield. Added complications with control kites on different levels above ground lead to several miss punches.
As I set the start up then immediately started I set off a tiny bit (lot) too fast, missing number one in spectacular style! Oops...after that I had a clean run but my legs felt heavy after a weeks hard training and I was kicking myself for making such a big loss at the start.
Putting that behind me I took over helping at the start before heading back to the event centre for the second race. Making sure I wasn't going to mess up number one again I set off well and had a clean run! My legs were absolutely shot by the finish though, was happy to end on a better note than I started the day, gaining 6 places to break into the top 10 in the chase! Now I need to just race like that in both races and it will all be fine :-)
At the head of the field in both the male and female races team inov8 were in the running by the time of the chase. Graham Gristwood won after a very close race with Kris Jones (although Kris chose to omit a control..) and Oli Johnson(2nd) and Rachael Elder also won after chasing down Grace Crane!