Lakeland Warrior 2023

Written by Alasdair Pedley, on behalf of Masterplan Adventure.

The Lakeland Warrior grew out of lockdown as a small event to get elite runners back into high quality orienteering. The backbone is the mapping and course planning by Martin Bagness, with a very small team of local helpers, and now Masterplan Adventure involved in the behind-the-scenes organisation.

This year (and last year) the races had World Ranking Event status, and the GB Level 4 and 5 Squads have chosen to use the weekend to kick-start the upcoming season. It’s a great chance to bring together a large number of squad athletes to foster team camaraderie. We stayed at Hawkshead Youth Hostel, also with athletes from SEDS.

Saturday saw a middle distance race at Haverthwaite, which was won by Megan Carter-Davies and Euan Tryner. Euan is a bottom-year M20 so will no doubt be looking to build on his 20^th place at JWOC (long distance) last year at JWOC 2024 in Czechia. He is now at Edinburgh University training with the excellent orienteering club there.

Image: Ben Mitchell and Peter Taylor-Bray debrief after Saturday's middle distance with course planner Martin Bagness.

In the evening, we had a GB squad team meeting, outlining what the squad system will look like for athletes in 2024, followed by an analysis session of the middle race. Exchanging stories of how people approached the technical challenges is a brilliant way of providing inspiration for improving others’ orienteering technique.

Image: Women's prize winners - Left to Right: Imogen Pieters, Eilidh Campbell, Chloe Potter and Megan Carter-Davies, with course planner Martin Bagness. Prizes sponsored by Kong Running, Keswick.

Megan continued her fine weekend the following day by taking the win at the long distance race at Witherslack. Her partner Ben Mitchell took the win on the men’s course. Megan and Ben now run internationally for the Norwegian club Halden SK, after 9 years with Finnish club Rajamaen Rykmentti. They live in South Wales and run for SBOC domestically. We also used Ben’s entry system Pre-Entries for the weekend, which worked nicely.

There were some excellent performances from other young athletes, notably Adam Barrie, Imogen Pieters and Adam Methven - names to watch out for next season! That’s what Lakeland Warrior aims to be all about - providing a platform for up and coming junior elites to mix it with the seniors.

Results and Maps available at: Lakeland Warrior 2023 (Masterplan Adventure)