The final league table is available as a pdf file here – or scroll down to view it on the screen (you’ll have to zoom in!) Many thanks to John for an excellent series; he reports:

The final event in the series of 10 night street MapRun events was held on 21 March in Kingswinford, based at Kerstin and Martin’s Full Supply business premises. True to form, Eloise Lee  and Ben Crone were the leading female and male runners and are this year’s NSL champions, Eloise retaining this title from the previous year, whereas this is Ben’s first title. 

As well as running in all of the events, Eloise put on an event at Bearwood and Ben also put on an event and ran in nine out of the 10 events.

There was stiff competition for the second spot in the Men’s competition between James Thomas, Robert Rose and Dave Aldridge. In the Women’s competition, Eloise’s friend Molly Browne was a close second. Although Molly and her husband George have enjoyed their street orienteering with HOC, they’ve moved to Sheffield but say that they will be joining a club up there. Mandy Mackereth, Karen Thompson and Sammy Pritchard were the leading HOC women behind Molly.

There was a close tussle for the women’s veterans title with Karen Thompson and Mandy Mackereth tied on 138 points. However, Mandy competed in nine events whilst Karen was involved in six events, of which she planned two. The NSL rules state that, where there is a tie, the runner who competed in the most events is the winner, so Mandy is this season’s Ladies Veteran champion.

In the Men’s Veterans competition, I narrowly edged ahead of Peter Langmaid who, along with Eloise and Robert Vickers, ran in all 10 events.

In the Men’s Super Vets competition there was another close finish with Robert Vickers losing the title he’s held for the last few years to Colin Palmer. Jennie Uff retained her Women’s Super Veteran Trophy.

At the other end of the age spectrum, Craig Thompson had several excellent runs and provided stiff competition to many of the older runners and is clearly becoming a strong and capable orienteer. 

I would like to thank everyone who took the time to plan one of these events, particular to those doing so for the first time, and to everyone (in total over 60 runners) who took part in the series. In my recollection, this has been the busiest NSL series for many years and the meals we have enjoyed after the events have been really enjoyable. I’m looking forward to a similar, busy series in 2024/25.

John Leeson, NSL co-ordinator