Southampton Orienteering Club is celebrating its 50th year.

As part of our celebrations, we wanted to introduce a new event in an exciting format. The Sunset and Beyond Relay. Colin Hicks came up with the idea of a Harvester style event but in an Urban/Park setting.

The Sunset and Beyond Relay pits teams of six against each other in a parkland and urban setting. The early runners start in daylight then, as the sun sets, later runners compete in the dark. Each team must have at least two female runners and a maximum handicap of 40 points using the Harvesters system.

Handicap points are based on age class:

The aim was to keep the competition close, with mini-mass starts just a few minutes later than the winning time for the previous Leg.

A tight schedule to complete the event including prize giving by 10 pm, by which time we had to vacate our event centre venue.

So we had all the excitement of the Harvester in a four to five-hour event!

There were prizes and medals for the first three teams and a brand new Trophy for the winning team to hold for the year.

The event was on Saturday 24th March at Fleming Park, Eastleigh (Southampton). The Leg lengths were as follows:

Legs 1 and 6 were in the Park so were suitable to be run by under 16s.

The Start, Change over pen and Finish were right outside the event centre building along with a spectator control visited by all courses. The atmosphere around the hand over pen was electric while inside those preparing to run were bubbling as news of runners going through the spectator control filtered in.

Colin Hicks planned the event and got the courses spot on with a great mix of Urban and parkland running.

The whole event was put on by some 11 helpers including Phil Cooper (WIMBORNE ORIENTEERS) who Controlled the event and helped set up. Terry Smith led the computer team and put in a lot of time and effort in pre-event preparation and coped admirably with all the challenges on the night. Pete Davis put in the hours up front dealing with the publicity, advertising and innovative online entries and payment system and I did my best to keep everything on time on the night.

Nine teams took part and the first three teams home finished within 8 minutes of each other after just under 4 hours of racing. The winning team from Wessex Orienteers, 'Wessex We Six,' consisted of Tracy Crickmore, James Crickmore, Peter Suba, Dale Paget, Alan Blanchflower and Julie Astin. They won in 3:44.25, 'SLOW A' was second in 3:48.34 and 'Wessex Hex' were third in 3:52.12.