Not so WEE - new records in Wednesday Evening series
The 2024 Wednesday Evening series proved to be very popular with athletes, as a new record for average attendance was established over the ten weeks of competition.
Although last year's total of 919 series participants wasn't quite attained, there were three fewer races this year due to a later start and an earlier finish, and an average of 87 people per race will mean we have to take a look at the number of start blocks available in future.
Dominic Edward, at 45, is our oldest-ever winner of the Green course, but he's been in great form all year, with three maximum scores, and is a justified winner. Scarlett Kelly defended her Green women's title for a third straight year despite only racing six times.
Something old, something new in the Junior class. James Hammond's six year reign as boys champion came to an end, as he raced only once, exams and preparation for big international races taking more of his time, so Peter Owen is the new junior champ, in 3rd place overall. Scarlett made it a double with the girls crown adding to her overall title.
Our Short Green course has been a welcome addition to the calendar, particularly for youngsters moving up the colours and more senior members who don't have the stamina for our long course, and it went right down to the wire this year to find out the overall champion. James Edward led for nine weeks, but was just pipped at the post by Hanna Brindley's week 10 performance, and the junior duo was well clear at the top of the table.
The Orange course featured an epic three way battle between some of our top youngsters, and Sean Truswell topped the class by five points from Lachlan Carruthers. Esme Finch was 3rd overall, with nine Gold standard runs, and is the girls champ. No such issues on Yellow - Leo Lockyer had his boys title wrapped up in week 5, while Aurora Lockyer showed good late season form to defeat Leo three weeks on the spin and win the girls trophy by some margin.
If all our runners were stacked end to end, they would be most upset. However, we had 687 runs across the series, from 210 different runners. They ran for 2202km in the ten weeks, or the distance from Stirling to Vienna. They also climbed 77,555m on the courses, or 194 times up Dumyat from the uni to the summit. 8618 controls were punched, and they took 27.318 minutes on courses, 455 hours more or less, or a shade under 19 days.
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