Jenny's Perspective: I was pleased to finish 4th in the British Night Champs as I made quite a few mistakes - catching Hannah early on put both of us off but it was a good lesson in ignoring people. I was feeling confident after all the night training we've done in Sheffield this winter but unfortunately Helen's done it all too of course! Congrats to her for a good run and the first national title of the season...

I wasn't quite as confident going into the JOK Chasing Sprint (see maps) as I seem to always get a bit caught out by these fast races at the start of the season. It was great fun however and I enjoyed racing round with people in both qualifier and final but was gutted to lose a sprint finish for 2nd place (Claire was well clear) - usually my strong point. Congratulations to Claire and Laura for 2 solid runs, on the day I just wasn't quite fast enough (some more pits in the green would have suited me!) but at least I got a hat!

All-in-all I'm really pleased with how the weekend went and looking forward to doing loads more races in the next few months . Usually I have to have a chat with Liz about my poor early season form but hopefully not this year (for her sake as well as mine)!

As for my Fantasy UK Cup team, a mixed weekend with some not running, a few top 5's, but unfortunately no victories (come on Oli!).

Oli's perspective: Well, it was a great weekend of racing, but I'm disappointed with my results! The first weekend of the domestic season is always a good chance to test your fitness/technique and I guess I am pretty happy with my condition.

The night champs (see maps) was a good technical test - I ran a clean race until catching Ed at around 75% when I lost my concentration a bit and made some mistakes. It felt good to run alone and give the course some respect but often there is more to orienteering than that! As for the mispunch - it was a New Year's resolution of mine to check every code in every race. It lasted almost 2 months...maybe it was good to learn the lesson early this year. Still, I can take away some confidence from this race.

JOK Sprints were a different story. The qualifier threw up quite a few hard (random?) controls and in fact it was almost impossible to run without any mistakes. I feel like I coped well in these areas and minimised my time loss, but elsewhere I made some avoidable mistakes. Not bad, but not great.

The final was a much simpler race with almost no difficult controls. Again it came down to the distractions of head-to-head racing to cause mistakes. Certainly I lost only a few seconds but it was enough to lose touch with the front group and be caught from behind. My legs just didn't have it in them to out-sprint Speaky or Mats - they ran a good hard race so well done to them, Allan and Matt.

So, I've got some work to do. But overall I'm happy with where I am right now and excited about the next few months...

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