The Irish Orienteer

January 2012/1

2012-01-22T17:37:00.010Z

Happy New Year
Rather belatedly, Happy New Year everyone. After the Christmas excesses (the Goal Mile, maybe followed by a run up the mountains on Christmas day, then orienteering on St Stephen's Day, followed maybe by the Djouce trail race, the Setanta hike and a race on New Year's day), it's good to be back to normal!
Why not make a new year promise to yourself to try some new orienteering experience this year, whether it's night-O, Trail orienteering, sprint-O, mountain bike orienteering, running in a new county, a new province or a new country? The world is your oyster ...

Accessible orienteering

In the current economic climate, orienteering can represent great value for money: where else would you find a fun day out for a family for an entry fee of €20 or less? One of the major costs of orienteering is transport, however. This could be tackled in several ways: bring to people to the orienteering by public transpiort, by special O-buses (there used to be buses organised to events so that non car-owners could still travel) or by car-pooling as the IMRA have been forced to do to reduce parking difficulties. Another way is to bring the orienteering to the people: the growth of urban orienteering, in the UK and across the world, has opened up the sport to runners and others who might not have tried it before; you can run events on people's doorsteps and still provide an orienteerting challenge.
With sprint and urban races taking place in competitions with the profile of the World Championships, we can no longer say that we don't have suitable terrain in Ireland. We may not have the complex forests of Scandinavia, but we have the towns and cities to make challenging city races and maybe draw in a whole new generation of orienteer who will then move on to the classic sport.
Anywhere with a higgeldy-piggeldy core should provide a good challenge; throw in a few parks, a few hills and some buildings like a university campus and you're almost there. Look at any map of an old Irish town and see the potential: Cork, Wexford, Waterford, Kilkenny, Drogheda, Newry, Galway, Howth, Sligo, Dublin, Balfast, Derry ... Of course we need the orienteers there to first produce the maps and then to capitalise on the event and grow the sport, and we need the existing orienteers to support the events, but even might oak trees grow from little acorns ...

New Squad Blogs
Ivan Millar has launched two new blogs for 2012: one follows the Senior Squad's preparation for the World Championships in Switzerland in July (see it here) and the other follows the elites generally - see here. World Championships selection will take place at the Jubilee 5-Days orienteering in Scotland at the beginning of June, unfortunately clashing with the Irish 3-Day in Galway.

Try Night-O
It's one of orienteering's better-kept secrets. Night orienteering adds new challenges - it makes even the most innocuous areas interesting, and makes interesting areas much more so. There are three events left in the Dublin by Night series (Barnaslingan (behind The Scalp near Kilternan) on Jan 28th; Slade Valley, Saggart on 4th February and The Curragh on February 11th). The Northern Ireland Night Championships are also on February 11th at Parkanaur, near Dungannon, Co. Tyrone. Details from LVO here. Note: For insurance reasons, night orienteering is restricted to M/W 16 and above.

2012 O-Planner
It's that time again - armchair planning for the events you'd like to take in in 2012. There are competitions at home and abroad, one-day to multi-day, suitable for all ages and abilities, some family-friendly, some less so, some big, some small. If you can recommend any events that you think others might enjoy, send the details to TIO and I'll include them. Have a browse here and see what appeals to you....

January

Do some night orienteering! See the IOA fixtures list for details.

February

18-21 Portugal O-Meet, see here. This is tied in with the date of Easter but this year it coincides a bit with schools' mid-term: good for kids, bad for air fares. Inland, not too far from Porto.
18-20 Morocco 3-Days including sprint and supersprints. See here.
24-25 Israel Championships near Jerusalem. See here.
25-26 Marina Grande, Portugal. World Ranking event. See here.

March

2-4 Murcia, Spain. Details here. At this time of year the south of Spain can be lovely to run in: oranges and lemons fresh from the trees at the finish ...
10-11 Slovenia. Karst limestone terrain near Trieste. See here.
23-25 Mediterranean Championships, Rome. 2 middle distance, 1 sprint. Park World Tour. See here.
24-25 Danish Spring: a new format and a new name for the Spring Cup. May be a bit early for some - there can be snow on the ground still, but this is when the Scandinavians come out of hibernation. See here.
24-25 British Sprint and Middle Distance Championships, York. Details here.

April

6-9 JK2010 at Easter in Scotland. Challenging terrain (the 2015 World Championships will be in Scotland) and the awesome Craig'a'Barns near Dunkeld. Don't miss it! See here.
6-9 Sardinia 4-Days. See here.
6-8 Prague Easter. Sandstone forests in the Czech Republic. See here.
13-15 US Championships, Georgia. Sprint, Middle, Long, Trail-O. See here.

May

5-7 Irish Championships in Kerry. Sand dunes at Castlegregory, Inch and the Maherees. Bishopstown OC.
5-7 British Championships, Cumbria. A pity they clash with the Irish Champs. A new BOF rule means that non British Citizens can't be British Champions, though, so we may see a few more of our UK-based orienteers running at IOC instead of BOC. Details here.
5-6 Tio Mila overnight relay for teams of ten runners; legs from 7 to 18 km, near Linkoping, Sweden (served by Ryanair). Details here.
5-6 European Rogaine Champs, Kaunas, Lithuania. See here. Good preparation for the annual Setanta Rogaine! (A rogaine is a long distance score event, typically 12 or 24 hours).
14-20 European Championships, Dalarna, Sweden. Public races from 17th to 20th. Entry cap at 5000. Details here.
17-20 Holland-OL. 5 events in 4 days at Breda in Holland. Details here.

June

2-3 Bruges O-weekend Belgium. Details later here.
2-4 Irish 3-Day, Oughterard, Co. Galway. WEGO three-day. Can Oughterard match Inishbofin for differentness and good orienteering? We'll have to wait and see ...
2-5 Scottish Championships and Jubilee-5 weekend: details here. Sounds like a fantastic few days orienteering; includes the Irish Team selection races for the World Championships.
2-5 Jubilee O-Festival, south east England. Details here.
16-17 Jukola and Venla Relays, near Helsinki, Finland. A must-do-in-your-lifetime event. Overnight 7-person relay for anyone, Venla 4-person relay for ladies in the afternoon. Details here.
16-17 Veteran Home Internationals, Northern Ireland. A pity it clashes with the Jukola, but it's great to have the event in June and not October or November when the weather can be against us.
18-23 Tallinn O-Week, Estonia. Includes two World Ranking events on sand dune forests. See here.
20-24 Greenland "Nuuk O-Festival". See here. Maybe only for the really committed!
23 Setanta Orienteers' Wicklow Rogaine.
29-July 1 European Youth O-Champs, Bugeat, Correze, France. Runners in M/W 14/16/18. There should be open events for the rest of us too. See here.
29-July 2 Belgian 3-Day near Liege. Long WRE (World Ranking Event), Middle and Long, plus training. See here.

July

1-6 Kainuu O-Week, Finland. Details here.
1-8 World Masters O-Champs, Harz Mountains, Germany, on the border of the old East/West Germany. Age classes M/W 35+, no selection required - just pay and play! See here.
2-8 Sorlandsgaloppen, southern Norway. Details here.
7-13 Junior World Championships, Kosice, Slovakia. Age classes M/W 20 only. Details here. 4-day public event also running with JWOC - details here.
15-20 Swiss 5-Day and World Champs, Lausanne, Switzerland. Support the Irish team at WOC! Details here.
22-27 Swedish O-Ringen 5-Day near Malmo, southern Sweden (easily accessible). The biggest multi-day event of all. See here. "Sand, sea and beech forest". In recent years the O-Ringen has really opened up, with team events, a 2-day race, mountain bike and trail orienteering included.
22-28 Croeso Welsh 6-Day, Aberystwyth. The Irish Juniors are going here for their 2012 tour. Details here. Cheapest entry closes on January 31st.
24-29 Croatia Open, Delnice, northern Croatia. Negative Karst terrain, lots of huge depressions in the forest for 5 days. See here.

August

1-5 OO Cup, Slovenia. Includes "Ultimate" classes where the maps have no paths! See here. More karst forests, with the famous Postonja caves nearby.
9-12 Tyr-OL 3-Days, Austrian alps, including a World Ranking event. Sprint, Middle, Long. See here.
31-Sept 1 World Rogaining Championships, Prague. See here.

September

1 Copeland Islands, Co. Down. LVO event. Check your tidal tables before you travel ...
5-9 SE Europe O-Champs, Bursa, Turkey. Details here.
22 City of London race. If you can't make it to Venice in November, try this, the 5th staging of the event. See here. Followed next day by the Southern Championships at Epping Forest in Essex- see here.
28 Leinster Championships, Carraig na Seabhac, Co. Wicklow. Ajax.

October

2-6 and 7-10 Sicily. Two events back to back. Details here later in the year.
6 Northern Ireland Championships, Binevenegh, Co. Derry
13-14 Junior Home Internationals, south of London.
18-21 North American Championships, Delaware. Details here.
30 Munster Championships, Dromana, Villierstown, Co. Waterford. WatO.
30-Nov 4 Istanbul 5-Days, Turkey. Details here.

November

9-11 Adriatic O-Meeting, Italy, just defore the Venice street event. Details here later in the year.
12 Venice street O. A great event, by all accounts. Details here.
25 Connacht Championships.

December

26-30 Sylvester 5-Days. Annual Christmas time event in Belgium. See here as a starting point.
27-31 Australian Christmas 5-Day, Victoria. Details later in the year from the Australian O-Federation here. Our own Eoin Rothery, former multiple Irish champion, won the Men's C-class in the 2011 event.

... which brings us back to where we came in!

A really good place to look for events abroad is in the calendar section of the "World of O" web site here. More information and reports on these events will be found in CompassSport magazine (www.compasssport.co.uk). Some of the information in this list came from CompassSport.

Changing age classes?

Are you due to change your orienteering age class in 2012? Your orienteering age is determined by your age on 31st December of the year. Junior age classes go in 2-year increments from M10 or W10 to M/W20; veteran age classes go in 5 year increments from M/W 35 upwards; Open classes (M/W 21) are for ages 21 to 34. Relatively few competitions with the exception of Championships require specific age classes to run on specific courses.

Age classes 2012

Year of birth	Age class
After 2001	M/W10
2000-2001	M/W12
1998-99	M/W14
1996-97	M/W16
1994-95	M/W18
1992-93	M/W20
1978-91	M/W21
1973-77	M/W35
1968-72	M/W40
1963-67	M/W45
1958-62	M/W50
1953-57	M/W55
1948-52	M/W60
1943-47	M/W65
1938-42	M/W70
1933-37	M/W75
1928-32	M/W80
1923-27	M/W85
Before 1923	M/W90

Harold White receives Torch Trophy

As reported here before Christmas, Harold White has received a Torch Trophy for his voluntary work for orienteering over the years, culminating in his work as coordinator of the successful JK 2011 in Northern Ireland. The photo shows Harold with the award and Princess Alexandra at a ceremony in London. Harold is IOA Technical Officer.

International Trail-O 2012
There are two international Trail-O Championships in 2012. The European Champs will be run alongside the Foot-O in Falun, Sweden from 17th until 20th May; the team can be up to a maximum of 6 in each of the Open and Paralympic classes. The World Championships will be run as a standalone event in Scotland from 6th until 9th June; the team can be up to 3 in each of the Open and Paralympic classes. Preliminary entries have to be in by 15th and 31st of January respectively so this message is seeking expressions of interest from those wishing to be considered for selection in order to gauge the potential size of team. Please respond urgently to atgartside (at) yahoo.co.uk.
It should be noted that those selected will be required to bear the full costs of participation; at the moment it looks as if these will be for ETOC €225 plus accommodation and meals plus return travel from home and for WTOC GB£455 plus return travel from home.

TIO Archive

Delve into the past in the Irish Orienteer Archive from 1982 here.

December 2011/1

2011-12-06T22:44:00.005Z

Connacht Championships Report

Yet another loaves and fishes event where a small number manage to feed a multitude. The Ryan family and Padraig Higgins staged another Connacht Championships on November 27th, on a new map of open firing-ranges and military land at Oranmore, Co. Galway.
The terrain was fast but provided few technical challenges for the experienced competitors. The map was good (1:10000 scale with 2.5 m contours) and had a much more professional look than the Portumna map used for the 2010 event. Some winning margins were pretty tight (2 seconds in W16) so small errors or route-choice variations could be the difference between winning and losing. Climb was negligible so running the whole course at speed was the only way. The final loop (shared by a large number of courses) traversed an area of long tussocky grass which contrasted with the faster running of most of the map. Old walls and lots of small stony areas shown as cairns, with shell-crater depressions, provided many of the features.
Darren Burke (CorkO) added to his Munster Champs title and won the M21L course, and Ros Hussey (DUO) did the same in W21L. Organisationally, the event was good, with SportIdent timing, results and Routegadget available at teatime (others please copy!) and the opportunity - as with other WEGO events - to enter and pay electronically.
Looking at the courses on Routegadget, there did seem to be a lot of shared legs and some more variation in direction would have provided more interest, and maybe more use could be made of the large depressions rather than just siting a control on the edge at ground level, but I have learned over the years that you criticise a Connacht Championships at your peril!
The area is a bit reminiscent of a nearby one at Kilcolgan used for an IOC Relay (in 1991?) with lots of walls and cairns, but that area was forested which reduced the visibility of the controls and increased the navigational challenge. On this occasion, for me, the controls were too visible and the navigation too easy. It would be a good area for a night event, though.
Results, Routegadget etc here.

Irish Trail-O Championships
LVO staged the Irish Trail-O Championships at Castlewellan on November 26th. Alan Gartside, Stephen Gilmore and Wilbert Hollinger, who would normally be among the top finishers, were involved in the organisation, so it opened the competition up a bit.
There were two classes: one for Irish Champion and one for visitors. John Kewley won the visitors' class with a score of 19 points out of a possible 22, and a decision time of 56 seconds. Interestingly, John was the only one of the 22 competitors to get the first timed control right. Second was GB team-mate Ian Ditchfield also with 19 points but with a decision time of 105 seconds. Christine Roberts was 3rd with 16 points.
In the Irish Championships section, Declan McGrellis again proved his expertise, winning with 18 points and 86.5 seconds from Helen Baxter (18 points, 116 seconds) and Lyle Fleming (16 points, 222 seconds). Details of the event and results (also of previous ITOC's) are here. Planners analysis etc to follow.
It is hoped to run the British Trail-O Championships at Newborough Forest in Anglesey in March, only a stone's throw from Holyhead.
Virtually all the Irish Champs competitors were from LVO so they obviously know about the event. Try finding details of it via the LVO or NIOA websites, though ...

Junior Squad Training for JWOC

Junior World Championships hopefuls had a training weekend at Newcastle, Co. Down on December 3-4 under the watchful eye of coach Greg McCann. The weekend coincided with an LVO competition in Donard Forest on the slopes of the highest mountain in Ulster. Donard, incidemtally, was the location of possibly the first Irish Junior Championships, at a time when the Junior and Senior Champs were separate. That was, I think, in 1977. The map was printed on Tyvek, which was a revolutionary step: it stained easily with mud and blood, but you could read it in the bath (nobody had showers then!).
JWOC 2012 is in Slovakia next summer and age alasses M and W 20 are mainly involved.
There will be further training sessions for the Juniors at the end of January, with the possibility of a spring tour during February mid-term. They will also have a week's training in Scotland after the JK at Easter, and a tour to the Welsh 6-Day in July. Oh to be young again!

Design an O-Top

The Irish Juniors are working on a design of an O-top for international competition. Production of the tops will be subsidised by income earned at JK2011 in Northern Ireland.

Harold awarded Torch Trophy

LVO's Harold White received a Torch Trophy at the end of November to mark his many years of service to orienteering, culminating in his coordinating the very successful JK2011 last Easter. Harold, wearing his 3ROC hat, is also the IOA Technical Officer.

The Torch Trophy Trust has its origins in the 1948 Olympics held in London. Before every Olympic Games a torch relay is organised from Athens to the host city. Following the 1948 Games, the Torch designed for the last leg of the Relay into Wembley Stadium was presented to the Trust.
The Trust provides small bursaries to assist volunteers in sport and presents Awards to individuals who have been identified as making an outstanding contribution as a volunteer in their chosen sport.

For the Torch Trophy Trust, the flaming torch symbolises its dedication to helping and recognising the efforts of volunteers in sport. Click on the flames on this page to find out more, and apply for one of the limited number of Torch Trophy Trust Bursaries.

The Trust is entirely run by volunteers, and its Trustees are some of the best known names in British sport. Those involved include Mary Peters, Jimmy Hill and Bobby Charlton. See more details here.

Congratulations, Harold!

Night-O Starts in Howth

The first night event of the winter is at Howth, Co. Dublin, on Saturday 10th December. Subsequent events in the "Dublin by Night" series are on Saturday January 14th (Phoenix Park), 21st (Ballinascorney), 28th (Carrickgollogan), February 4th (Slade Valley) and 11th (Curragh East). Generally two courses are offered but for insurance reasons they are only open to M/W16 and above. The Howth event will start at the GAA club on Dungriffin Road and there will be two courses, about 3.0 km and 4.5 km. Start times 6 to 7.30 pm. The club bar will be open afterwards for orienteers! Details from Fingal Orienteers here.

O in Venice

Dave Richardson reports from the urban O-event in Venice ...

M50 Venice 2011

Saturday's Park-O

The 2nd weekend in November brought our 2nd visit to the Venice street orienteering event. As last year the Venice event was preceded by two world Park tour sprints, unfortunately the details of the sprint events were only published a month before so we had already made our travel plans.
This year's trip started with a "Park O" event in Venice S.Elena on Saturday afternoon, this was actually a sprint type event on a 1:5000 map. The weather was great for running, 14 deg C, sunny and no wind.
My men's open course was 4.2K and 18 controls around the streets and alleys of an area at the Eastern end of Venice, it was a nice easy introduction to orienteering in Venice for those new to it. I had been in bed with the 'flu most of the week so was reasonably happy with a time of 30:55, I made one small error missing the alley I was looking for on the first control that cost around 30 seconds but other than that no mistakes.
The main Venice street O was Sunday morning, again aroound 14C and sunny. The first start times were at 0900 so by the time we travelled up the Grand Canal on the water boat we could already see orienteers appearing and disappearing up lanes and passages, maps in hand, dodging tourists.
The organisation of the event is good: a large sports centre acts as event centre and has a large basketball arena where everyone changes. The buzz around the place is fantastic, 4000+ orienteers from all over the world all there for the unique experience of the strret O.
A short walk to the Square used for the start, into the -4 box, clear. -3 Check, -2 control descriptions (Wait a minute - they are all "end of building"!). -1 box ready to go, beep beep beep and off just like every event except this time it's fast and furious. Which alley way to take? The left hand one, across the bridge, second turn on the right and then next right, just down here - yes got it! Good - now I can settle down. The course was 7k but by the time I had navigated the narrow streets I actually ran 11k. There were some really good legs including my 8-9 that was 1.6k including the problem of which Grand Canal bridge to use.
Quick route choices, fine navigation at speed (not so much of the speed for me!) and keeping map contact are the challenges on this 1:7500 map. Small errors losing 30 secs or a minute can lose you 5 -10 places the times are that tight. I finished in 72:13 in 78th place, without the 5 minutes of errors I made I would have been 55th, but that's orienteering.
Personally I can't wait to go back next year and would recommend it to anyone and everyone. Hopefully next year we won't be the only two entries from Irish O-clubs. Visit the Venice orienteering web site here. See the Men's Elite course here.
[Dave found the Venice experience useful a few days later, running in the Ajax Glendoo Ridge event - remember the area of the IOC Relays in May? "First turf bank on the left, second right, third left ...- Ed]
(Editor's note: travel may be simpler next year with the possibility of specially arranged direct flights from Ireland going out on Saturday morning and back on Sunday evening. Interested? Watch this space!)

Plans for WOC

How will the recently-announced IOF plans for future World Orienteering Championships (WOC) affect Ireland? The WOC has evolved over the years since Ireland first took part in 1976: initially it was just an Individual and Relay with all the team running and the event on every second year; in 1979 it changed to odd years so as not to clash with the Olympics; then the World Cup started on the years between WOCs; then qualification races started so that not everyone got a run in the final; then other disciplines were introduced (sprint and middle-distance) and the WOC was run every year.
What's next?
Read aall about the IOF proposals here. Let us know what you think!

Senior Selectors Wanted
Ivan Millar, Director of High Performance Orienteering with IOA, is appealing for people with an interest in international elite competition to come forward to act as selectors for international teams. Contact Ivan at elites@orienteering.ie

That's all for now!

November News

2011-11-06T18:02:00.004Z

Munster Championships

Yet again a small group of dedicated volunteers put on a good weekend's orienteering against the odds. This time, Andrew Cox and his crew at Waterford Orienteers staged the 2011 Munster Championships amid the elephant and whale-sized (and bigger) boulders of Coumshingaun in the Comeragh Mountains and followed that with a relay in the John F. Kennedy Forest Park in Co. Wexford the next day.

Conditions for Coumshingaun were far from ideal - rain, mist and wind - but that didn't seem to deter winners like Darren Burke (CorkO) in M21 and Ros Hussey (DUO) in W21. Disintegrating bags, dissolving ink and mushy maps may have affected the slower runners more, and the intervention of a local farmer who didn't like the location of one of the controls marred the competition for some, but by and large the runners seemed to have enjoyed the challenge.
Pat O'Connor kept the courses in the open for all except the very first and very last part, with the more technical courses climbing towards the corry lake and its detailed contours and erratic rock features (imagine that at 1:5000 scale or larger!) and for a large part of the courses the runners luckily had the wind and rain at their backs.
Results of the Championships are here.

Monday's relays at JFK were a more casual affair, with teams made up from multiple clubs in a range of age classes. Again, rain provided refreshment and showers at the same time, and the on site café (on its last day of the season) provided hot chocolate and shelter for the prizegiving.
The open men's class was won by the Irish Junior Squad (Cillín Corbett and brothers Jonny and Laurence Quinn) with only seconds to spare over the more seasoned Aonghus OCléirigh, Brian Corbett and Colm Hill. Fingal (Eileen Young, Kathryn Walley and Jean O'Neill) were the only team in the Women's Open class. Results (containing some anomalies due to SportIdent issues) are here.

Connacht Championships

Another small group staging a Championships are Western Eagles - Galway Orienteers who are running the Connacht Championships at the end of this month, on Sunday 27th November. The event is on flat, open terrain at Oranmore, Co. Galway. The cheapest entry date has just passed, but entries don't close until 18th November. You can enter by post or by e-mailing the entry form and paying the fees electronically to the WEGO account - details are on the entry form.
Entry form and full details of the event are here.

Irish Trail Orienteering Championships

LVO are staging the Irish Trail-O Championships the day before the Connacht Champs, at Hillsborough Forest in Co. Down, on Saturday, November 26th. Hillsborough was mapped for one of the JK Trail-O events last Easter. Start times from 11.00 to 1.00 pm.
What is Trail-O anyway? It started out as orienteering for the likes of wheelchair users who had to stay on paths but who still wanted a navigational challenge. Anybody can take part and most of the "legs" (if you can call them that) involve choosing which control, of maybe 4 or 5 visible ones, is the one shown on your map. Typically two "legs" are timed as a tie-breaker: the fastest at making the correct choice. No timing is involved on the other legs, where the competitor travels along a path and looks at controls in the terrain (sometimes wuite a distance away). Sounds easy, doesn't it? Don't be misled: the controls may only be a metre apart, and none of them might be in the right place ...
It's a tough mental and navigational workout and planners Wilbert Hollinger and Stephen Gilmore (not Alan Gartside as I had previously thought) will have you begging for mercy at the end. Give it a try! Get all the information you need on Trail-O at www.trailo.org here.

The website for the Irish TrailO Champs at Hillsborough on Saturday 26th November is now available at www.niorienteering.org.uk/trailo. Come along and test your decision-making skills against Stephen Gilmore's and Wilbert Hollinger's best efforts to distract you. You can get a taste of Wilbert's planning techniques by undertaking the Pre-O at the LVO Autumn Trophy event in Kilbroney Park on 19th November; the differences between Pre-O and championship Trail-O will be outlined in the debrief.

Alan Gartside

Get ready for winter

Checking you have antifreeze in your car, Yak-Trax for your feet and fuel for your fire are only some of the things you need to do. Orienteers are checking their batteries and sorting out their kit for the start of the night orienteering season.
Lagan Valley Orienteers' Wednesday evening night-O training series starts on November 9th at Ormeau Park in Belfast with a mass start at 7.30 pm. Though aimed primarily at LVO members, they probably wouldn't mind a few interlopers ...
Meanwhile, the annual "Dublin by Night" series starts with Fingal's Howth event on Saturday, December 10th. More about this closer to the time.

Junior Orienteering

Greg McCann (LVO) is stepping down from his coaching position with NIOA after many years encouraging juniors from all over Ireland in the Junior Squad. Greg's IOA counterpart, Ruth Lynam, will also be stepping down after her stint as IOA Junior Affairs Officer at the next IOA AGM. They will both be hard acts to follow. Simon Reeve (FermO) is one of the upcoming coaches in NIOA and he will be working with the Juniors, while NWOC's Allan Bogle will also be taking up a position with NIOA involving coaching development. Allan has been involved for several years in running orienteering training in the Canary Islands, so who knows: a junior training camp there next year, maybe?

The Junior Squad were put through their paces at Glengarra, on the slopes of the Galtee Mountains in Co. Tipperary, in a training day before the recent Munster Chmpionships. Several new faces were notable, particularly with a new wave of girls coming into the squad - that's great to see. Ruth and the other coaches ran training exercises in the forest and on the open mountain, prepared by Brian Corbett, before retiring for chicken curry at the Rathgormack hiking centre.

Plans are afoot for a Junior tour next summer, with families voting on the alternatives of the Welsh 6-Day, Swedish O-Ringen, the OO Cup in Slovenia and the World Championships tour in Switzerland. There may also be a training weekend for JWOC hopefuls before Christmas, and further training at February mid-term and again before March.

Anyone for Venice?

The annual street event in Venice is on next weekend. Read about it here. Irish orienteers have made the trip before - are you going this year? Will you write and tell us about it?
Over 4300 are entered for the event this year. Just because it's urban doesn't make it a sprint: the longest course is Men's Elite at 11.1 km, so the running distance will be about 16 km or more. Entry is still open, by the way, at only €15 for late entries. Details here. There's also a Park-O event the day before.

SHI Results

Few surprises for Ireland in the Senior Home International in south Wales at the beginning of November. Details on the Senior Squad blog here. A cold and windy day on the open mountain for the Individual event saw two of our Swedish-based runners produce the best results: Conor Short 4th M20 and Hugh Cashell 8th M21. Scotland held England to a draw in the individual event with 24 points apiece, but ran ahead in the relays to win by 54 to 46. Wales were comfortably ahead of Ireland on both days, with Ireland only scoring in single figures. Nevertheless, it was a very useful outing for some of our up-and-coming orienteers, running under serious pressure and getting more international experience which will stand to them at Junior World Championships and the like in the future. The final result was Scotland 54 England 46 Wales 28 Ireland 16. See some photos of the event here.

Newstime

If you have any news, please e-mail theirishorienteer@gmail.com

Autumn 2011 Orienteering

2011-10-18T21:45:00.001+01:00

Senior Home International

Ireland, England and Scotland travel to Wales this weekend for the annual Senior Home International event. Generally the competition boils down to England v Scotland and Ireland v Wales. This also generated a "Celtic Cup" competition for several years at the suggestion of John Butler, then the Chairman of WOA, where there was a Wales v Ireland match alternating between the two countries, with a flexible scoring system dictated by the composition of the away-team, run separately from the Junior, Senior and Veteran Home Internationals.

The SHI team (careful with your acronyms, folks!) is:

M21
Colm Hill (team captain)
Seamus O'Boyle
Ruairi Short
Hugh Cashel
Darren Burke
Gerard Butler

M20
Kevin O'Boyle
Conor Short
Josh O'Sullivan Hourihan

W21
Olivia Baxter
Rosalind Hussey
Ruth Lynam
Toni O'Donovan
Regina Kelly

W20
Áine McCann
Deirdre Ryan
Niamh Corbett.

The competition involves an individual race on Saturday at Merthyr Common South and a relay on Sunday at Clydach terrace (see previous map here), both near Merthyr Tydfil in south Wales. This part of Wales has an abundance of open limestone areas, often with old mine workings, quarries and other man-made features. When the mist is down, it can be pretty interesting, as many of the features acan be below ground level (depressions and the like).

Provincial Championships

The 2011 Munster Championships is on Sunday October 30th at Coumshingaun, Co. Waterford ("the valley of the ants", if I'm not mistaken). Waterford orienteers are hosting the event on the boulder-strewn slopes of the Comeragh Mountains. Entries close on Friday October 21st. The Irish Junior Squad are having a training weekend in conjunction with the Championships.

Monday 31st sees a Sprint Relay event run by WatO at the John F Kennedy arboretum near New Ross in Co. Wexford - you can enter the day before at the Championships.
Details of the events are here.

Meanwhile, in the West, Western Eagles are working on the Connacht Championships near Oranmore in Co. Galway on November 27th. Cheap entries to 4th November. The terrain is flat, largely open, military lands, originally surveyed by Padraig Higgins in 2002 and updated in 2011. Full details and entry form here.

Twenty Years Ago

Were you orienteering then?
Autumn 1991 saw Issue 54 of The Irish Orienteer, with Orla Cooke taking over from Una May in the Relays at the World Championships in the Czech Republic on the cover. In those pre-internet days, for the latest fixtures information you rang an answering machine which was updated every week. The Senior Home International (in those days for M/W 19, 21 and 35) was about to happen in Wales, with an individual and a score relay (an idea borrowed from FermO). The Junior event was in West Cork.
Marcus Pinker (3rd in H17A in the Scottish 6-Day) reported on his trip to the Junior World Championships in Germany. (Lesson learned: if you carry pots of jam in your rucksack, make sure the lids are on.)
The Swedish O-Ringen featured a new idea called "Trail orienteering" for what we were then allowed to call "disabled" orienteers.
The Shamrock O-Ringen in West Cork was run at the end of June (in previous years it had been around St. Patrick's Day). 179 foreign competitors ran, with 274 Irish: bigger numbers than we see now.
Brendan O'Brien (current IOA Chairman) discovered aerobics; Thomond Orienteers in Limerick staged their annual Burren Walk at the end of August with a sand-dune event at Fanore next day - traditionally the end of summer and the start of the new O-season. National "Try Orienteering Day" was on 29th September with ten come-and-try-it events around the country. Preparations were in train for the only night-O of the season, 3ROC's Phoenix Park event; the Leinster Orienteering Council (remember that?) and the clubs had their own news pages; Ultrasport advertised VJ O-shoes for £45.95 (like running shoes, they must be proportionately cheaper nowadays).
Results included the Leinster Score Championships at Trooperstown (won by Justin May), the 3ROC bike/foot event in Phoenix Park (won by Justin May), and a league event on Three Rock Mountain .
The address list included several clubs no longer with us: Bolton St, ComadO, Crusaders, Eastern Command, Former UCCO, kevin St, Lee Orienteers, Little Killary Orienteers, Lough Key Orienteers, Southern Orienteers, Thomond Orienteers and Trim/South Meath Orienteers.
Read the full stories here.

Thanks to Brian Hollinshead for the scanning and to Aine Joyce for the other features. All old TIO's are now available on the IOA website.

Read about other non-orienteering events from 1991 here.

Good times, good times ...

That's all for now, folks!

October 2011 News

2011-10-11T00:12:00.008+01:00

Wales 2 Ireland 0

The Irish Veteran Home International Team followed the lead of our Rugby players rather than our Junior orienteers and bowed to a superior Wales at last weekend's VHI near Aberdeen in Scotland. Wins by Brian Corbett (M50) and third places from Ruth Lynam (W55) and Colm O'Halloran (M45) and 4th for Aonghus OCléirigh (M50) were among the highlights in an otherwise rather disappointing performance. To take points off the English, Scots and Welsh requires a lot of good results in a race where every second counts.
Saturday's Individual race at Birsemore Hill, near Aboyne, overlooking the River Dee, used an excellent area of runnable forest with a variety of terrain - heathery scattered tree forest with marshes and small hills, contoured rocky steeper forest, and runnable coniferous forest all featured on the day's menu.
Lessons were learned, though: you need a full team as every finisher counts, and we were deficient in the M35 and M40 departments; you have to take the right map at the start, as it is very costly to return to the start to get the right one later; the EMIT electronic timing system "brikke" which you carry can affect your compass; the team needs to be selected in good time; and you can't check things too often, particularly for a relay ...
The gospel for the day of the Relays (Matthew 22: 1-14 here) could be a metaphor for the Irish team: the guests were invited to the wedding feast but they didn't come; the servants went out to the highways and byways to gather the halt and the lame to come to the feast, and come they did - but one of them didn't have the approporate wedding garment and was unceremoniously given the bum's rush: the first two featured but even though we didn't all have Irish O-tops, we managed to last the distance. There was plenty of weeping ans gnashing of teeth too ... and many were cold, but few were frozen.
Saturday night's social beside the old railway station in Ballater (where Queen Vicoria arrived by train on 14th May 1869 as it was and is the nearest station to Balmoral) featured Irish music, lots of food, a spellbinding story telling session that had everyone enthralled, and more music and dance and some RouteGadget presentations: the Vets love a night out!
Sunday's Relay at Coull, also near Aboyne, was our last chance at redemption. Complex rules govern the composition of Relay teams and the best teams were assembled (two men and a woman or two women and a man; the man on the women's team and the woman on the man's team must be M or W45, 50 or 55; the total ages of the team must add up to 150 or more, etc ...: if you think it sounds easy, imagine a Rubik's cube with all the runners' names and age classes on it and try twisting and turning it to solve the puzzle!). The leg lengths ranged from about 2.2 to 4.8 km in a superb forest with boulders and contours, printed at 1:7500 (French World Championships' organisers take note!).
Ten, nine, eight, seven ... They're off! Along the path through the ferns beside the lake, up the hill under the power-line; over the ruined wall and the rusty fence (ouch!) into the forest ... Meanwhile, the leg 2 runners wait. And wait. And wait. The Welsh come back in an unbelievable time ... something is wrong: soon it becomes clear - the right people are not running the right legs.
An unfortunate labelling mix-up in the WMW class has jumbled up the running order so people aren't getting their expected leg lengths. Wales run away with three short legs (luckily the Isle of Man don't have a team) and the organisers meet the Team Managers to consider what to do. In the end the result (England winners with 139 points, Scotland 136, Wales 79, Ireland 61) is decided on the Individual race alone. A great pity for the organisers and runners alike, all of whom put a lot of time and effort into the event. The organisers were suitably contrite and the other aspects of the weekend largely made up for the mistake.
Next year's VHI is due to be in Ireland, so let's hope that lightning doesn't strike twice!

The team was: Hazel Thompson, Ann Savage, Eileen Young, Heather Cairns, Mary O'Connell, Kathryn Walley, Nadine Grant, Ruth Lynam, Barbara Foley-Fisher, Ger Power, Teresa Finlay, Jean O'Neill; Declan McGrellis, Dave Weston, Colm O'Halloran, Brian Corbett, Aonghus OCléirigh, Alan, Cox, John McCullough, Raymond Finlay, Nigel Foley-Fisher, Bernard Creedon. We were missing an M35 and an M40 to complete the line-up.

See the full results and other bits and pieces about the events here.

Blast from the past

Old issues of The Irish Orienteer are now available online on the IOA web site here. It's almost like being able to delve into the Census records ... More on this later!

Home International Time

2011-10-04T23:41:00.004+01:00

Ireland Third at JHI!

For the second year in a row the Irish Juniors outran the Welsh to take the Judith Wingham Trophy at the Junior Home International event, held in Gortalughany & Necarne in Fermanagh last weekend. This is the trophy awarded to the better of Ireland and Wales over the 2 days of the 4-way competition between England, Scotland, Wales & Ireland.

England dominated both relay and individual competitions. Points after the Individual races (run in conjunction with the Northern Irish Championships) were England 80, Scotland 51, Ireland 44, Wales 41. Scotland pulled ahead in the Relays but the Irish juniors ran consistently, with some sparkling performances, to increase their lead over Wales.

Results of the Individual competition are here. As well as plenty of solid results there were four Irish prizewinners - Jack Millar (M18) & Caoimhe O'Boyle (W14) both 2nd in their classes, and Aine McCann & Niamh Corbett 3rd in W18 and W16 respectively.

The juniors had the most demanding conditions, with mist swirling across the moors reducing visibility, but it didn't bother them too much. The mists lifted for the NI Championships, held slightly later in the day. Gortagughany is an open mountain area where limestone meets bog, in the Cuilcagh Mountains on the Fermanagh/Cavan border: a stream in the southern part of the map actually forms the border between the Republic and Northern Ireland, a border which was not evident in the formation of the Irish team. Eoin McCullough was drafted in on Friday afternoon to replace Alex Simonin in M18, and several new faces in the M and W14 classes had very good runs. The girls beat both the Scottish and Welsh girls on Saturday, which was quite an achievement. See the Gortalughany map here.

The relays at Necarne, near Irvinestown, returned to an area first mapped for an earlier JHI. (See the map here). An equestrian centre surrounded by forest, Ciara Largey's courses provided a sprint-O experience through the gardens and buildings before taking in some forest: a major contrast to the sink-holes and burnt heather of Saturday.

More details of the event and the team's results are here.

Well done to all the team:

W18: Áine McCann, Andrea Stefko, Deirdre Ryan, Síomha Callanan

W16: Aoife McCavana, Clíona McCullough, Niamh Corbett, Róisín Long

W14: Caoimhe O'Boyle, Jill Stephens, Meabh Perkins, Siobhán Delaney

M18: Cillín Corbett, Eoin McCullough, Jack Millar, Laurence Quinn

M16: Donal Kearns, Harry Millar, Jonathan Quinn, Shane Hoare

M14: Cathal O'Cléirigh, Paul Pruzina, Peter Meehan, Sandis Rektins

W18: Aine McCann, Andrea Stefko, Deirdre Ryan, Siomha Callanan

W16: Aoife McCavana, Cliona McCullough, Niamh Corbett, Roisin Long

W14: Caoimhe O'Boyle, Jill Stephens, Meabh Perkins, Siobhan Delaney

M18: Alex Simonin, Cillin Corbett, Jack Millar, Laurence Quinn

M16: Donal Kearns, Harry Millar, Jonathan Quinn, Shane Hoare

M14: Cathal O'Cleirigh, Paul Pruzina, Peter Meehan, Sandis Rektins

Veteran Home International

October 8th/9th sees the Veteran Team travelling to Scotland to try to emulate the Juniors and take some Welsh scalps, just as the irish Rugby team will be trying to do on the other side of the world. The events are stand-alone individual and relays justr for the Vets, ar Birsemore and at Coull, near Aboyne in Aberdeenshire. The rules have changed this year so the team consists of one M and W35, one M and W65 and two each of M/W 40, 45, 50, 55 and 60; twenty four souls in all.

The currently selected team is: Declan McGrellis, Dave Weston, Colm O'Halloran, Aonghus O'Cleirigh, Brian Corbett, Andrew Cox, John McCullough, Nigel Foley-Fisher, Raymond Finlay, Bernard Creedon; Hazel Thompson, Eileen Young, Anne Savage, Mary O'Connell, Heather Cairns, Nadine Grant, Kathryn Walley, Barbara Foley-Fisher, Ruth Lynam, Ger Power, Teresa Finlay, Jean O'Neill.

A report will follow after the weekend ...

Senior Home International

This event is in south Wales on October 22/23. Several juniors have been brought in to make up the team, so good luck in particular to Aine, Deirdre and Niamh in W20.The selected team is

M21Colm Hill (Team Captain), Seamus O'Boyle, Ruairi Short, Hugh Cashel, Darren Burke, Gerard Butler

M20 Kevin O'Boyle, Conor Short, Josh O'Sullivan-Hourihan

W21 Olivia Baxter, Ros Hussey, Ruth Lynam, Toni O'Donovan, Regina Kelly

W18 Aine McCann, Deirdre Ryan, Niamh Corbett.

This proves that orienteering really is a family sport: the team includes four first cousins, and a mother and two sons ...

Upcoming Events

Take note of the changes in the dates of the Ajax come-and-try-it at Marlay Park in Dublin (now on Sunday 9th October) and the 3ROC Leinster Autumn Series event at Carlingford (now on Sunday October 16th).

LVO are running an NI League event on Saturday 15th, the day before Carlingford, at Slieve Garron beside Slieve Croob. This was the part of the map we weren't allowed onto at the JK because of nesting birds, so it will be a new challenge for anyone who goes. (Did you read in the most recent CompassSport about Jon Musgrave being buzzed by a buzzard while out running in Scotland? He (Jon) got a nasty cut on his head from the bird strike).

Remember the Munster Championships at Coumshingaun in the Comeragh Mountains in Co. Waterford on Sunday 30th October (the Bank Holiday weekend) followed by a sprint relay at the JFK Forest Park in Co. Wexford on the Monday, if you're not doing the Dublin Marathon. Details are here.

Frank Ryan has jusrt circulated details of the Connacht Championships on November 27th: see here.

JHI 2011 Ireland Team

W18: Aine McCann, Andrea Stefko, Deirdre Ryan, Siomha Callanan

W16: Aoife McCavana, Cliona McCullough, Niamh Corbett, Roisin Long

W14: Caoimhe O'Boyle, Jill Stephens, Meabh Perkins, Siobhan Delaney

M18: Alex Simonin, Cillin Corbett, Jack Millar, Laurence Quinn

M16: Donal Kearns, Harry Millar, Jonathan Quinn, Shane Hoare

M14: Cathal O'Cleirigh, Paul Pruzina, Peter Meehan, Sandis Rektins

What the Dickens?

2011-09-15T22:58:00.003+01:00

Sweeney Todd, Jack the Ripper, Charles Dickens - they'd all have felt at home in last weekend's London City orienteering race. The 4th staging of the event saw more than 1100 orienteers from more than 25 countries running in the heart of the city, down alleyways, across squares and cemeteries, through the quiet Saturday streets of the financial centre of one of the world's great cities.
Don't confuse urban orienteering with sprint orienteering: anyone running the 8.9 km Men's Open class will soon realise the difference. Course lengths were measured as the crow flies, which is fine if you're a crow. Typically the actual length was about 50% longer, depending on your route.
Carlow's Gordon Parker, the course planner, used the multi-level Barbican Estate and Arts Centre as the start and finish area, throwing the runners straight into a confusion of levels, tunnels, ramps and passageways which were difficult to represent on a two-dimensional map. The 1:5000 scale map, however, showed the detail clearly and - given a bit of careful map-reading - allowed the runners to figure it out. (In fact there was a significant Irish input into the race, with Ronan and Julie Cleary the Controllers).
The streets of the financial district were surprisingly quiet and but the hazards still included groups of Japanese tourists craning their necks to see St Paul's Cathedral rather than looking out for orienteers.
Although I have run urban races before, they tend to be short, whether in the JK, the Swiss 6-Day or at night in a Portugese fishing village (that was fun!), but this was unlike any orienteering I had done before. Popping in and out of small alleyways; suddenly emerging beside the Gherkin or St Paul's or some other well-known landmark: there was always something new around the next corner.
There are some different issues in urban orienteering: roadworks and building sites are obvious ones. These are marked on the map in pink, but because they can come and go at short notice, the terrain and the map are in a state of flux right up to the race. Have a look at the map and courses on Routegadget here. The event web site is here.
The best known urban race is probably in Venice in November, but the London race may come a close second. Hamlet without the Prince? Venice without the canals? Because London is comparatively close to Ireland, maybe we overlook it as a destination, but the London City O-race is definitely worth a trip. Ask any of the LVO, Fingal or 3ROC runners who went this year.
Next year's London City race is on 22nd September, followed the next day by the Southern Championships.

Super Sprint

Many of the runners who did the London City race stayed on to run an "Orient-Show" style sprint race the next day in Regent's Park. The LOK Ultra Sprint Challenge format was three races of about 1 km which all the runners did. The times of these three races were added together and the fastest 4 runners in each class (Junior Boys, Veteran men etc) were set off together in the final a while later. These would finish 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th in the competition. The slower runners then started at 15 or 20 second intervals in groups of four and they would then finish 5th, 6th etc. The courses were gaffled to reduce following (i.e. broken into separate segments which runners took in a different order). It took a lot of work with planning and organisation, not to mention getting all the SportIdent details right, but it provided a fast, fun event for the competitors.
The courses included two sections in man-made mazes, visible to the spectators. The total area was only about 200 m x 300 m and it all fitted on a 1:1000 scale map with 1 metre contours on an A4 page.
The navigation was tricky (there were no control descriptions or control codes except for the juniors) and the precise control locations were shown by a small dot in the centre of the control circle. Some controls were within about 1 metre of each other, so you had to be careful you visited the right one and that you took them in the right sequence.
Mispunching did not mean disqualification, but you got a 30 second time penalty added on to your running time for each wrong control. Given that there were about 25 controls on each 1 km course, that could be a lot of penalties!
Fingal brother and sister Sandis Rektins and Zanda Rektina won the Junior Boys and Junior Girls races.
Here is the map for the final 1.4 km race. (You may notice a small enlarged area in the SE corner of the map, showing the maze at a larger scale. That's the kind of thing you only notice when you look at the map after you get home ...!)

September 2011 News

2011-09-01T23:19:00.154+01:00

World Championships Report

Solid runs from the Irish team at August's World Championships in France weren't enough to qualify for the finals, with the exception of Aislinn Austin in the Middle Distance. Several close calls, where runners just missed the cut, and the misfortune of a mispunch for David Healy, an injured ankle for Nick Simonin and a leg injury for Marcus Pinker, added to the story of WOC2011.

Read the gripping first hand WOC reports from the Irish Team on the team blog here.

The French were formidable, with star Thierry Gueorgiou taking gold medals in the middle, long and relay races. Sweden topped the medals table with 10, France took 4, Switzerland 3, Norway, Finland and Czech Republic 2 each and Denmark 1.
One of the overlooked results at WOC 2011 was Wilbert Hollinger's 8th place in the Trail O WOC, interestingly one place ahead of Italy's Remo Medella who produced the map for the JK Sprint race at Stranmillis College last Easter. Wilbert and his LVO clubmate Alan Gartside were the only two Irish representatives at WTOC. Wilbert was a member of the first Irish team to take part in WOC back in Scotland in 1976. It was announced at WOC that Scotland will again be hosting the World Championships in 2015.

Marcus in the Relay

Other interesting features of WOC were the disqualification of 45 runners in the Sprint Qualification. Some were unfortunate to mispunch on closely-spaced controls but many were seen by officials while crossing out of bounds areas or features marked as uncrossable - so it pays to be careful. Soren Reichers, running for Germany but no stranger to Irish orienteering, was one of the disqualified men. On the other hand Denmark's Emma Klingenberg, again familiar to Irish orienteers, finished 7th in the qualification race and moved up to 6th in the final, only 47 seconds down on the winner, Linnea Gustaffson of Sweden.
Even some of the best orienteers were defeated by the terrain - Finland's Minna Kauppi missed the first control on the women's long final and retired.

What about the terrain? Tales had come back from the training camps of unrelenting technical low visibility forest, and they were not far wrong. The qualification races were run in very detailed low visibility forest but things improved later in the week for the finals - have a look at some of the maps on the WOC web site here. What you don't really get a sense of is the level of detail in the terrain and the fact that relocation was so difficult.

Click on image to enlarge

The WOC has developed from just an individual and relay into a week of orienteering with qualification races in the three disciplines - sprint, middle and long distance, finals in these three variants, and a relay to finish off the week. To encourage spectators and, I suppose, to help subsidise the costs of WOC, organisers now run open races in parallel with WOC - more on this below.

Aislinn Austin

From an Irish perspective there were several runners within striking distance of qualifying for the finals, and both relay teams did well, the men finishing 22nd out of 40 starters, ahead of the likes of USA, New Zealand, Portugal and Belgium, and the women 24th, ahead of USA, Serbia and Japan.
A picture is worth a thousand words, however, and one of the most telling pictures appeared in the regional newspaper, Le Dauphiné, the day after the relay: it shows Thierry Gueorgiou running through the arena, about 10 minutes before he returned to take the relay gold. But it also shows a brave Marcus Pinker just starting out on the last lap of the relay for Ireland, to finish 40 minutes down on the winners. It shows how much work and resources we need to put into our elite orienteers to rival the world's best.

At the end, one of the Irish runners, Stockholm-based David Healy remarked "Now, back to easy Scandinavia"!

WOC 2012 is based in Lausanne in Switzerland from 14-21 July. See details here. There's a Swiss 5-Day being run with WOC 2012.

Northern Ireland Championships Entries Open

Fermanagh Orienteers are staging the NIOC on Saturday October 1st at Gortalughany, near Florencecourt, in conjunction with the Junior Home International weekend. Entries to NIOC are open here.
The JHI competitors will have an individual race on Saturday and a relay at Necarne near Irvinestown on Sunday.

Fingal Scatter Series Starts

Dublin's Fingal Orienteers are again running their series of scatter events (mass starts where you have to visit a specified number of contriols in any order). The first event was last Sunday and the rest are on Sundays 4th September (St Anne's Park), 11th (Newbridge Demesne) and 18th (Malahide Castle).

London Irish

A scattering of Irish orienteers are among more than 1000 runners taking part in the 4th London City orienteering race on Saturday10th September. This may be the biggest urban O-race apart from the famous annual race in Venice each November. Entries are still open until 3rd September here. Incidentally, the Venice races are on 12th and 13th November: details here.

WOC Tour report

A six-day event was run in parallel to the World Championships with almost 4000 competitors including more than 50 from Ireland. A good number of the Irish Junior Squad travelled to France to run in the event, called the "O-Festival ERDF" after the sponsors, the French electricity company. The format was six races, four middle distance and two long, run in the mornings before the WOC races, using the maps the WOC had just used.

The WOC/O-Fest arena at La Féclaz

The courses and terrain were challenging, to say the least. After a few days training there, Conor Short summed it up: "You can't see, you can't run and you can't navigate"! He did manage to overcome some of these difficulties, though, to produce a 2nd and a 6th place during the week in M20 Elite.
Many of the runners found it very tough going, whether it was the ankle-twisting limestone pavement, the fallen trees, the low-visibility, the aggressive wasps, the heat or the illegible maps, or a combination of all of these.
The detail on the map was so dense it was very difficult to see, even with a magnifier - that was my main problem during the week. And when you could read the map, it didn't make any sense! Big crags and re-entrants on the ground didn't jump off the map at you. One must ask why the maps weren't printed at a more realistic scale, maybe 1:7500 or 1:5000 for the O-Festival, even if the rules specified 1:10000 or 1:15000 for WOC. Was it an orienteering or an eyesight competition?
Unlike in Norway for the equivalent event last year, we had no sprint race, which was a pity as they are a lot of fun. What we did have, was a chance to run on some of the most demanding terrain I have ever seen: I was struggling to beat 20 min/km. One very experienced orienteer I heard of spent 25 minutes in the circle looking for the control, making three attempts to attack it from different directions. Again, I would have to ask if the terrain should have been mapped at all? The maps were impressive, though: a large area of the Revard plateau mapped in incredible detail. (Note: Forget about your preconceived ideas of a plateau being flat! It was high up, but certainly not flat). The forests reminded me of the Asiago area in northern Italy where the 2004 World Masters was run, with alpine meadows, pine forest and limestone underlying it, but this was far more detailed than Asiago.
Some good Irish results were Brian Corbett (M50), Ruairi Long (M12), Clodagh Moran (W12), Niamh Corbett (W16), Conor Short (M20E), though we had no overall podium places.
Any other notable features of the event? The organisation was a bit shaky the first day, with runners having to walk an unexpected uphill 3 km or more from their cars to the arena (there were shuttle buses from different parking but not many of the competitors knew). As a result lots of people missed start times but the organisers didn't record all the actual starting times so the day 1 results were a bit of a mess - nothing like the mess that was in the portaloos, though: whoever thought that 8 toilets were enough for 4000 runners? And what about the event centre where you had to go to register? How do you find it, in the middle of Chambéry? Of course! The details are in the programme! And where do you go to get the programme? Why, to the event centre, of course! Mmm ... The courses for younger juniors were difficult, but admittedly some of the routes were taped with red and white streamers. However, some of the deepest pits on the map (the ones where you couldn't see the bottom) were also marked. With what? I'll let you guess that one!
In fairness, things did improve after the first day.
I would be slow to recommend the WOC as a family holiday, unless you are all committed and competent orienteers. The days can be very long (05.30 alarm, anyone?) if you are to run and then wait around for the WOC race to follow. However, the advent of electronic timing, satellite tracking of runners, big screen and TV cameras in the terrain, have made orienteering close to a spectator sport, so there's lots to keep you interested, especially in the relay.
So, maybe next year in Switzerland will be more family friendly? But it's a great experience for an orienteer to go and see the world's best in action.

Photos of WOC and some other stuff will follow shortly ... they were here but they all vanished after about three hours putting it all together this afternoon!

Job Vacancy with NIOA

Following a grant of funds from Sport NI, NI Orienteering, the Regional Governing Body for Orienteering in Northern Ireland, wishes to recruit a full time Coaching and Talent Development Officer at a salary of £24609.00 per year
The closing date for the receipt of completed application forms is: 4pm on Wednesday 14th September 2011
For further information on the above vacancy or to download an application pack, visit our website here. Alternatively, application packs can be obtained by contacting Raymond Finlay on 048 6634 8888 from the Republic (or +44 28 6634 8888)
NI Orienteering is committed to Equality in the Workplace

Scottish Six Day Report

Were you there? Will you tell us about it?

Running Shorts

2011-07-06T23:28:00.009+01:00

JWOC

Colm Moran, Conor Short, Cillin Corbett, Jack Millar & Josh O'Sullivan Hourihan are battling it out at the Junior World Championships in Poland. Colm (pictured finishing the Sprint race) is the best of the Irish so far. Watch out for Denmark's Emma Klingenberg (and her sister, Ita) in W20 who have an Irish mother and could run for Ireland ...

Looking at the teams entered, it's clear that JWOC is taken very seriously by the big orienteering countries. The list of past winners reads like a who's who of elite orienteering, and it's great to see IOA putting resources into orienteering at this level as a preparation for future World Championships.
Unfortunately none of the lads qualified for the Middle Distance final (only the top 20 in three very competitive heats go through).
Update: An incredible 3-way tie in the Men's Middle Distance race on Thursday saw Austrian, Russian and Finnish runners taking Gold medals! The top three all had a time of 25 mins 43 secs.

Follow them here.

EYOC

A team of M16's (Harry Millar and Jonathan Quinn - pictured in the Relay start), M18's (Eoin McCullough, Laurence Quinn and Mark Stephens) and W16's (Clíona McCullough and Niamh Corbett) ran in the European Youth Championships in the Czech Republic at the end of June. The team was led by Greg McCann and Brenda Hynes and the results can be found here.

The team had mixed fortunes, but EYOC is great experience as preparation for big international competition.

Shamrock O-Ringen

Rather belatedly, a brief report on another memorable Shamrock O-Ringen in West Cork on the June Bank Holiday weekend. Yet again the visitors almost outnumbered the Irish competitors, for whatever reason. Are we scared of the contours? The marshes? The midges? Are we afraid that we'll get terminally lost? Even if we did, to be running around a West Cork marsh with the cuckoos, the myrtle and the fantastic terrain is a wonderful way to spend a weekend.
Word of the Shamrock is leaking out, though - people from all around Europe come back again and again to savour the atmosphere and terrain. One runner put it in the same category as Finland's Jukola overnight relay - it's simply a unique event.
Kilcrohane provided the focus, with a middle distance race on Saturday, a classic distance on Sunday and a chasing start on Monday (where the winner is the first to cross the line). Darren Burke took the M21 Elite title, only seconds ahead of ken Peeters (Belgium) - see the photo. Cath Chalmers from Australia won the W21 Elite race. Overall results are here.
Next year's Three Day is in the Oughterard area of Co. Galway, run by WEGO, on the first weekend in June.

WMOC

A number of Irish competitors are at the World Masters Orienteering Championships at Pecs in Hungary. The forested karst limestone terrain is different to anything we have here, so it will be a new challenge. Read about the events here.
The lady on the left is Sarolta Monspart, 1972 World Champion from Hungary. She was the first non-Scandinavian World O-Champion, seen here at the opening ceremony for WMOC 2011.

Setanta Rogaine

Boggy underfoot conditions and very warm weather did not deter the competitors at the 2011 Setanta Orienteers Rogaine on June 25th/26th in Co. Wicklow. The championship event, 24 Hour Team, was won by Nicholas Mulder & Ryno Griesel (Rand OC, South Africa) who managed to collect all controls within the 24 hours. This is a great achievement in the bog and heather of Wicklow, something the pair wouldn't be used to. The conditions were very wet under foot after a lot of rain the day and the night before the event. They may have been more used to the heat wave that we suddenly got over the weekend though, with temperatures of 23C during the day. It was a warm, clear, calm night for those who spent the night out on the hills. The 6 Hour Team event was won by Ruth Lynam & Don Short (CNOC). This was a great win for them in their first 6 hour Rogaine after competiting in many previous 24 hour Rogaines. Paul Mahon took the honours in the new addition to the Rogaine events, the 6 Hour Individual.

Jukola Relay

There was a small Irish presence at the Jukola 7-person overnight relay in Finland on June 18/19. A CNOC team of Conor and Ruairi Short, Shea, Kevin and Niamh O'Boyle, Hugh Cashell and Colm Hill finished in a highly respectable 296th (not 765th as I said earlier!) place among the 1500 teams to start. Bishopstown's Nick Simonin, running for his Stockholm club Lidingo IFK, came in an amazing 23rd place on leg 1 (which started at 10.55 pm), only about 90 seconds down on the leaders. John and Eoin McCullough and Ronan Cleary ran on a London OK team and Nina Heikkinen (Philips) and Julie Cleary ran in the Venla 4-person Women's relay earlier in the day.
The Jukola is an amazing event: about 15,000 runners between the two races. There are orienteers in Finland whose only event of the year is the Jukola.
Next year's race is only 10 km from Helsinki Airport ...

Here, Eoin McCullough reports on his first Jukola relay:
My first experience of the Jukola relay in Finland is one I will never forget. Myself, my dad and two friends arrived in a muddy car parking field with a hint of rain in the air on Saturday afternoon. We found our army tent, which would be our accommodation for the night, and then went to check out the arena. For those of you who haven't been to Jukola before, the arena is like a small town, with everything you could possibly need at an orienteering event, or anywhere else, for that matter.

After an hour or so, we began to move towards the start of the Venla relay, the womens' relay. At 10 minutes past 2, over 1400 women streamed up the hill from the start and into the forest. The Venla relay turned out to be closely fought by Domnarvets GoIF of Sweden and Tampereen Pyrinto of Finland, with the Finnish team missing the second last control, where Domnarvets passed them and won the Venla by only 35 seconds.

A few hours later as darkness was beginning to descend, the slope above the starting pen became crowded with people, eagerly awaiting the start of the Jukola. As it got closer and closer to the start time, there was an electricity in the air as the runners turned on their headlights, a mass of lights bobbing up and down in the Finnish countryside. Then, at 10:55, an artillery gun signalled the start of the greatest relay in the world. Suddenly, the bobbing headlights were streaming out of the start and up the hill, with an Irishman getting to the top first, Nick Simonin.

After the start, everyone began to move to the finish arena where there was a huge screen with live images from the forest with live splits. It was thrilling to see 1500 headlights worming their way through the forest. The atmosphere in the arena was great, with everyone there looking out for their team to come through the next radio control. I went to bed after only 30 minutes of the mens' race, because I still had to run the next morning on leg 6 for my team.

As I was asleep, Halden SK won the Jukola by over 4 minutes to make it two Jukola wins in two years. Meanwhile, there was fierce competition for second place with Kalevan Rasti getting the better of Delta and Vaajakosken Tera for second place, with Delta finishing in third.

When I woke up to prepare for my race, the leading teams had long finished. I was in a mass start with over 1000 others. I myself had a good run and really enjoyed the runnable, technical forest and was in the top third of runners on my leg. I really enjoyed the run and was very happy it.

After my run we did some shopping, ate, and enjoyed the sun that had been shining since the early morning, making lovely running conditions, drying the ground and making it feel like summer again.

Later that day, most of my team stayed with friends who lived an hour away, near the Russian border. There we had a sauna, a swim in the lake, a good meal, and a well-deserved night's sleep in beds.

The next day we flew back from Helsinki to Dublin, ending an unforgettable few days. I really enjoyed everything about the Jukola, the running, the spectating, and especially, the incredible atmosphere of the Jukola. It was a great experience for me and all I want to do is do it all again next year.....

Scottish 6-Day Good luck to everyone going to the Scottish 6-Day at Oban at the end of July. This is a real taste of big-time international multi-day orienteering, with more than 3000 runners from all around the world. Entries are still open, by the way: see here. World Championships Of course the big event this summer is the World Orienteering Championships near Chambéry in France in mid-August. Will Thierry Gueorgiou be disqualified or fail to finish again? The Irish team have been preparing in France and Scandinavia and are ready to go: read their blog here. The Junior Squad are taking in the associated "O-Festival ERDF" as their summer tour. Details of this event, with more than 3000 runners, are here.
Meet the Irish Team, David Healy, Marcus Pinker, Seamus O'Boyle, Darren Burke, Nick Simonin, Ruairí Short, Niamh O'Boyle, Aislinn Austin, Ros Hussey and team leader Kyle Herron, here

Finally, have a great summer of orienteering - and please write about it for TIO when you're there or when you come home!

John McC .

PS Here are some more photos from EYOC and JWOC.

Josh O'Sullivan-Hourihan, JWOC Sprint

Conor Short, JWOC Sprint

Jack Millar, JWOC Sprint

Clíona McCullough, EYOC Sprint

Eoin McCullough, EYOC Sprint

Harry Millar, EYOC Long

Jonny Quinn, EYOC Long

Laurence Quinn, EYOC Long

Mark Stephens, EYOC Sprint

Niamh Corbett, EYOC Sprint

Sumer is Icumen In

2011-05-29T23:32:00.005+01:00

The Shamrock O-Ringen is just a few days away, the weekday evening events have started, the Senior Team are away in France at WOC selection events and the exams are with us ... Summer has arrived!

First Report from France

First reports from Aix-les-Bains are of a number of non-finishes from the elite teams. Ireland’s Toni O’Donovan reports:
“It’s been a pretty tough weekend with physical, technical terrain. The race today was a bit of a monster. Roz and Aislinn finished for the girls with only Marcus, Andrew and Nick finishing the boys race. Toni picked up an injury yesterday so went straight from the start to finish after collecting her map, David made it to 5 before going over on his ankle and at various points throughout the course there was attrition. Other teams faired in a similar way with, for example, the British team having even fewer finishers than the Irish team. A few have been particularly surprised by the rough nature of the terrain with more brashings and felled areas than expected. We’re back in Le Revard tomorrow to do some more training in the area…..” Follow the team's fortunes here.

Shamrock O-Ringen

The 17th Shamrock O-Ringen is on the June Bank Holiday weekend on the Sheep's Head Peninsula, Co. Cork. The first event is a Middle Distance race at Gortnakilly, then Day 2 a Classic Distance at Maulnaskehy and Day 3 a Chasing Start at Rosskerrig. The open mountain terrain of West Cork, and the unique atmosphere of the Shamrock, attract many competitors from abroad again year after year. This year there are more than 260 entries from sixteen countries, from Europe, Australia, New Zealand and USA. Check the event details here.
This year Kerry Orienteers are staging a prologue Sprint event on Friday evening June 3rd at Rinn na gCros, Kenmare.

Leinster evening events

The annual CNOC series of Tuesday evening events has started and there are three to go: Hill Wood, Monasterevan, on May 31st, probably Donadea on June 14th and Hollywood (with a barbecue) on June 21st. Start times are from 6 to 7.30 pm and there are normally three courses plus an "adventure run", a mid-length, simple course following line features (like the no-longer-used Red course in colour events).

Munster evening events

Cork Orienteering Club's evening events are on Tuesdays: details here. The series started on May 10th and runs until July 19th.

Ulster evening events

Evening events in NIOA clubs continue on Wednesdays (LVO WEE series) and Thursdays (NWOC). Details here.

IOA AGM

The IOA Annual General Meeting was held on the weekend of the Irish Championships, at Kippure Estate, Co. Wicklow. The outgoing Committee were all prepared to stand again and there were no controversial motions or exciting moments. Details of the meeting can be found here. (Well, maybe not ...!)

IOA Awards

At the IOA AGM, the following awards were announced for 2011:
Niamh Corbett (CorkO) got the Mactíre Trophy for her 4th place in W16 at last year's European Youth O-Championships in Spain;
Mike Long and Catherine King got one of the the Silva Awards, for their support for the entire Irish orienteering disapora for last year's World Championships in Trondheim, Norway;
Rory Costello (KerryO) got the Silva Trophy for his orienteering activity through the years in Kerry.

IOA at Adventure Weekend
The Irish Orienteering Association was represented at the recent Adventure Weekend at the RDS in Dublin, where outdoor centres and a variety of high-adrenaline activities were being promoted.
IOA shared a stand with the environmental group Leave No Trace and with Mountaineering Ireland.
Interest in orienteering was steady, with a number of lapsed orienteers returning to the fold, or people who had orienteered in other countries but who never tried it here.
Mainstay of the event was IOA Communications Officer Finn Van Gelderen, who took the chance to show his excellent one-minute film advertising orienteering whenever possible.
Another facet of the weekend was the Dublin urban adventure race "DARE", involving running, cycling, kayaking, assault courses and street orienteering ... with SI results processing by CNOC's Short family.

Leinster Inter-club Championships
GEN are hosting this event at Carrickgolligan, Kilternan, Co. Dublin on Sunday June 19th. All runners can count for your club, so come along and support it if you're not in Finland at Jukola. Make a weekend of it ant take in the LVO NI Series event at Tollymore, near Newcastle, Co. Down on Saturday 18th.

British Champion

Congratulations to LVO's Alan Gartside on becoming British Trail Orienteering Champion this month. Alan has pioneered trail orienteering in Ireland almost single handed and his events in conjunction with the JK at Easter involved the usual head-scratching deviousness we have come to expect of Alan.

Up to speed

Follow the fortunes of the Irish teams at the European Youth O-Champs in the Czech Republic here, the Junior World Championships in Poland here and the World Championships in France here.
No announcements have been made about the EYOC and JWOC teams, but piecing the evidence together suggests that the EYOC team will be: W16 Niamh Corbett and Clíona McCullough, M16 Jonny Quinn and Harry Millar; M18 Laurence Quinn, Eoin McCullough and Mark Stephens.
Equally, piecing together the evidence for JWOC suggests that the team will be Colm Moran, Conor Short, Cillín Corbett, Josh O-Sullivan-Hourihan and Jack Millar. Check for corrections when the teams are announced! (I got the teams right - they were named on 30th May. Visit the Irish Junior Squad page here.)

Setanta Rogaine Reminder

The 14th Setanta Rogaine (6 hour individual, 6 hour team, 24 hour team) score event in the Wicklow mountains) is on June 25th/26th and entries close on June 17th.
A Rogaine is basically a mountain navigation race, (or long score event) where you locate as many controls in the mountains as you can, in the allocated time period (6 or 24 hours). When doing the 24 hour event you can come back to the hash house for some food and a few hours sleep in your tent. The hardier competitors will stay out all night and will bivvy for a bit under a bush although some keep going without any sleep. The 6 hour would be a good event for those of you new to Rogaines and long events who want to practice your skills! See details here.

Finally ...

Good luck to all the young orienteers doing exams in June! Getting out for a run is a good break from studying and will help keep your brain working and your fitness maintained for those summer races to come ...

A Look back at IOC2011

2011-05-04T23:59:00.005+01:00

Mini-O at Kippure Estate (Pic: Tara Horan)

The JK in Northern Ireland a week before the Irish Championships brought benefits and challenges to IOC: benefits in increased numbers and joint promotion of the two events; challenges also in increased numbers and the associated parking requirements and the inevitable comparison of two rather different competitions. The emphasis in the JK was on an international orienteering festival with quality orienteering and lots of ancillary activities; the emphasis at IOC is on a small group of people running a National Championships, where the courses are the main focus and anything else we get is a bonus: more relaxed than the JK, lying somewhere between the JK and the Shamrock O-Ringen in outlook as it is in its dates.

Ajax took on virtually all the organisation, with help from DFO on the ground, and brought us three days of excellent orienteering, introducing us to the intricacies of turf cuttings and of Wicklow boulder-fields.

Saturday's Middle Distance race at Glendoo East saw Paul Smyth's courses zig-zag through the turf banks in full view of the waiting runners and finishers in the sunshine - turning orienteering into a spectator sport. With the exception of the Elite courses, the courses were very short with winning times more like a sprint than a middle distance race - some runners compared it to urban sprint racing without the buildings! Curiously, I could see no guidelines in the IOA Rules relating to a Middle Distance Championship, just Classic, Relay and Sprint. Bill Edwards (CorkO), home from New Zealand, took 1st place in the Elite, followed by Ger Butler (3ROC) and Jonny Kendall (CorkO); Toni O'Donovan (CorkO), Aislinn Kendall (CorkO) and Jenny Peel (SYO) took the top spots in the Women's Elite.

Results are here.

Kippure, the highest mountain in Co. Dublin, dominated the proceedings for the weekend - the distinctive TV mast was visible from much of the competition terrain and the event centre, at Kippure Estate near the Sally Gap hosted mini-O, the IOA AGM, meals, music, Routegadget talks, prizegivings, accommodation and socials. Read about Kippure Estate here and Kippure Mountain here.

On Sunday the action moved to Brockagh, near Laragh, for the Classic distance race, as breeding birds put paid to the original area. Aonghus OCléirigh planned the courses which were very testing in the early stages and ventured into less interesting terrain towards the finish with longer legs to challenge fitness and route choice. In common with the JK and all the IOC events, there was scarcely a tree to be seen or a drop of rain (I said scarcely, not none at all!) all weekend: giving a totally false impression of Irish weather to our 250 or so O-visitors.

Marcus Pinker (CorkO), Ger Butler (3ROC) and Shane Lynch (CorkO) took top placings in the M21 Elite, with Ciara Largey (FermO), Toni O'Donovan (CorkO) and Rose Burden (AIRE) finishing 1st, 2nd and 3rd in W21E. Marcus's win is particularly notable as he had been badly injured in a cycling accident and thought it would take him another year to get back to full fitness.

Classic event results are here.

Relays head for the turf banks (Tony Lawlor)

Monday saw a move to the blasted heath on the west side of Glendoo ridge for the Relays. Similar terrain to the Middle Distance - a bit wetter underfoot but with relatively less climb. The wind and the dust blew and the army tents and Buff-ed and buffeted bystanders with dust-smeared faces suggested Outer Mongolia rather than the Featherbeds, but the orienteering went ahead regardless. Planner Marcus Geoghegan brought the runners gradually up the hillside in full view of the start. Mass starts became specks of colourful ants scurrying across the turf, coalescing into small groups to confer before splitting up and moving on. The running was fast and the thinking required, faster still. The dust caused problems for the results team (see below) but Pat Healy kept everyone up to date with a commentary aided by Martin Flynn's live display (unfortunately only visible to Pat).

CNOC retained the Women's title (Niamh O'Boyle, Bridget Lawlor and Ruth Lynam) and Cork O initially regained the Men's title (Jonny Kendall, Arnis Saltumis & Shane Lynch) but subsequently an issue arose regarding the eligibility rules for Irish Relays which have both a residency and a citizenship requirement. As a result, CNOC were later declared the winners of the Irish Club Relay Championships while the Cork O team were the fastest team on the day. (I think I have it right now ...) Fingal won the Junior 48- class (Sandis Retkins, Donal Kearns & Seán Kearns) and CorkO won the Junior 36- class (Ailbhe Callanan, Ciara Fitzgerald & Norah O'Brien).
It does appear that there is an anomaly in the IOA Rules which require a runner in a relay team at the Irish Championships to (among other things) have been present in Ireland for at least 6 of the 12 months before the event, while no such restriction applies to the individual race. I gather that the IOA will be looking into ironing out any wrinkles in the rules in this area.

See the Relay results here.

There are lots of photos on the IOC web site here.

OMG! What a Nightmare!

Martin Flynn was in charge of the computers and results at the Irish Championships. Everything was going well until ...

I feel my mind shutting down as my body rises involuntarily out of the chair in a futile attempt to make a run for it.
It has all gone so well up to this. Downloading 500 pre-entry competitors is a lot easier than EOD for 100. The nearest thing to a problem was having to use the genny - generators are noisy, smelly, heavy things and I prefer to use batteries. After 'fixing' the results of Saturday, I was in bed by 1 am and the relay teams were entered by about midnight on Sunday. On a Shamrock, this would constitute short-time working. The live results screens had worked reasonably well, apart from the occasional power issues. It looks like the radio controls were working, despite some last-minute problems with the WIFI. Pat Healy is giving it large on the PA.
Then the first finisher downloads and the world comes crashing down.
In what is to become an all too familiar sight, the Ór Finishers panel flashes multi-colour, a sure sign that the course was wrong. Why is this happening? Did she do the wrong course? Is the course wrong in Ór? Was she given the wrong course in Ór? Was she given the wrong map? Is there a bug?   With only one relay per year, I did not have a chance to fully test it beforehand but I am reasonably sure that it should work.

They say that everyone has a guardian angel on their shoulder. Mine is named Denis Deasy. This is a typical conversation:

SI:              Beep!
Ór:              Wrong Course.
Me: Hold on a minute, I have the wrong course for you and I'll need to sort it out. What course did you do?
Downloader: Ehhhhh. (a reasonable enough response)
Me:             OK, what class were you on?
Downloader: Mmmm.
Me:              What is your name?
Downloader: Ahhhh.
(OK, I made that part up.)
Denis (finds it in the spreadsheet): Team 123, leg 1. Course H6-L

Course changed, blob green, move on.

With the time taken up fixing the course, I am up to high do and have visions of the download queue reaching back to the last control. I have lost confidence in the system. I am reasonably sure that there will be results but maybe not today.
People want to re-download to get a good splits sheet. Can't they see that I'm stressed out here and there's a queue building up behind them? Some people's blobs don't go green when their courses are fixed. I don't like this. I check them as best I can. One or two have obviously mis-punched. Others are just missing a control or two. I am always suspicious of this but don't have time to investigate. When Toni O'Donovan has a missed control, she takes it on the chin. I can't be sure if she realizes that she missed it or what. I'm sure she will be back if there is a problem.
Why has nobody come to get results? I try to look at them to make sure they make some sort of sense. I can only see one leg runner per team. There must be something wrong. No,it's OK, only first leg runners have downloaded so far.
There are downloaders with times of over 600 minutes. A sure sign that they didn't clear before starting. I am going to have to sort this out but when and how? All the time, Denis and I have to figure out what course people did and fix it - over 200 people. Some people are on the correct course. Somehow, it seemed weird when this happened. There is definitely something odd about the OP courses. They always give a green blob - maybe they don't have any controls defined on them. I will have to sort it out later. A guy downloads. "You're not Don Short", I say.
Don Short. Whenever I see him or his name, I know that some wacky and interesting form of chaos is on its way. For a long time, I have been convinced that the Shorts have a bag of SI cards and grab a random one out for each event, just to torture the results guy.
It turns out that Don's team is running in a different order to the one they declared. Or that they are running in the correct order but with different SI cards. Or that they are in a different order with different cards. Or that they are actually aliens from another dimension. One symptom of PTSD is that the exact details are removed to help save the victim from insanity. As it turns out, several teams have done something similar. I'm sure it happens all the time and is normal, though I wouldn't like to test this theory at a JK. I will just have to add a mechanism to make swapping easier in Ór.
At some stage, the queue disappears briefly. I am up to date and try to figure out what's going on. Paddy Joe is still belting it out on the PA. The radio controls must still be working. Who'd a thunk it!? I wonder what people think of the commentary.
I had assumed that my dry gritty mouth was caused by the stress until my mouse packed it in. Then I saw the dust. Everything was covered in it. Could it damaging the laptops, printers etc? Who knows, gotta keep going and hope for the best.
Ór starts to become slow and unresponsive. In a moment of hysteria I think maybe it's because of the dust. More likely it's a bug. I will fix it when this is over. Hopefully, it won't grind to a halt in the mean time. I look down - 200 downloads, less than 60 to go. I see light at the end of the tunnel.
People continue downloading (slowly) and Denis and I continue fixing their course. The immediate panic is abating and I have renewed confidence in the software but will the results be OK? There seem to be a number of problems. The results show FermO winning but Ruth downloaded ages before Sharon.
Why is Oisin Wickham DNF? Indeed why? He has a start & finish time and punched all the controls. I have since fixed the bug that caused the problem but I still don't know what happened.
At last, Marcus appears and demands results. I print out a set and try to explain that some of the times are wrong (no clear) and he will need to look for anything else that looks dodgy. He doesn't seem too happy but that's his problem, I am still trying to figure out how to sort out the problems I know about.
Finally, after fixing a few errors, Marcus is happy enough with the results to call a prizegiving. I think that one or two winners are mis-declared but this is quickly rectified. The last finisher arrives. I can pack up and try to remove the dust from my gear, my car and myself.
I come home and fix up the results. I remove the dodgy punches from the non-cleared cards and add the EODs. I still don't know what happened to the courses in Ór between midnight and 10 am but manage to figure everything else out to my satisfaction. Results uploaded. Routegadget looks OK. Time for sleep.
So, if you found me even ruder than normal on Monday, I apologise. You have to realize, I was having a very bad day.
- Martin Flynn

Shamrock O-Ringen Deadline EXTENDED TO May 15th!

Entries for the Shamrock O-Ringen on the Sheep's Head peninsula in West Cork were to close on Friday 6th May but have just been extended to May 15th. The event is on the June Bank Holiday weekend (June 4, 5, 6) and the entry list so far is dominated by runners from outside Ireland who have discovered them selves, or heard others talk about, the unique atmosphere of the Shamrock which makes people come back again and again. The format is a middle distance race on Saturday, a classic distance on the Sunday and a chasing start on the Monday, all on the wonderful craggy, contour-rich terrain with the smell of bog myrtle and the call of the cuckoo. What a way to spend the weekend!
As I write, entries have just crept up over the 200 mark, with slightly more than 50% from abroad, so there's plenty of room for more. The relaxed, friendly atmosphere with challenging terrain and courses are what mark out the Shamrock as different from other events, so go on and enter if you've never been there - you won't regret it!

Enter now at the Shamrock O-Ringen web site here.

Follow That!

2011-04-29T00:23:00.005+01:00

The final countdown to the 2011 Irish Championships is on. Last weekend's JK in Northern Ireland will be a hard act to follow, but Ajax's Irish Championships this weekend will be the biggest IOC for some years, maybe the biggest ever: more than 500 competitors have entered, many of them having stayed on for the week after the JK. The entry from Ireland stands at about 275 with visitors making up the balance.
The Middle Distance and Relay events will feature the open mountain with turf cuttings terrain on the spine of the Dublin/Wicklow border between Glencullen and Glencree, similar to the area mapped by Marcus Pinker at Raven's Rock/Prince William's Seat used for a Leinster Championships some years ago. Competitors at Sunday's Classic event at Brockagh, near Laragh, will have the runnable boulder-strewn slopes of Brockagh and the marshy ground and more complex contours and crags of Mall Hill to contend with.
The visitors are particularly prevalent in the older age classes - imagine 29 M65's in an Irish Champs!. However, the entry of 46 in M21E and 20 in W21E will make sure that there is hot competition at the top end too. Will Nick Simonin retain his title, or will one of the locals like Shea O'Boyle win the men's race? Will Niamh O'Boyle, who has had some injury problems in the past year, retain her title?
In the Relays, will 3ROC take the elusive men's title after finishing top Irish team at the JK? Will CNOC retain the Women's title?
In addition to the main events, Ajax's event centre at Kippure Estate, west of the Sally Gap, will feature a Mini-O event run by Colm Hill as a fundraiser for the Junior Team on Saturday evening and will also host the IOA Annual General Meeting on Sunday evening.
Full details and startlists are here.
Remember that parking at the events is limited, so try to share transport as much as possible.

JK2011

Marcus Geoghegan said it all, in his brief note about the event in the Irish Orienteering E-Group today:
"The eGroup has been very quiet about this, but that's probably because everyone is still stunned by the amazing achievement of the Northern Irish clubs last weekend in running the JK.
The events were fantastic, challenging, orienteering. The organisation was impeccable. It was a triumph, no other way to describe it. I don't know how they managed to do it, but I for one want to publically say well done. I'm already eagerly anticipating the combined World Champs and Northern Ireland 6-day in a few years' time."
I would have to agree with Marcus's assessment of the event. To attract more than 2000 orienteers to Northern ireland was some feat, many of them never having orienteered here, or even set foot in Ireland before, but to run four such excellent events with such panache and style really was an extraordinary achievement - as if the organisers had been doing it all their lives.
In addition to the fantastic sprint race which kick-started the weekend at Stranmillis College in Belfast, the Individual events on the dunes of Tyrella and the slopes of Slieve Croob, and the relays at Tyrella, continued to impress the competitors with their courses and organisational quality. On top of that, throw in a QUBOC prologue sprint in Queen's University and Belfast's Botanic Gardens, Trail orienteering at Castlewellan and Murlough, TempO at Stranmillis, a micr-O maze and three outstanding string courses for the junior juniors, a table quiz for the Irish juniors, the BOF AGM, and a concert and social in Newcastle, and it made up quite a weekend.
As someone who was involved in a peripheral way in some of the organisation, I could see the amount of planning and thought that went in to every aspect of the event, from terrain selection through bussing competitors, to mapping, to music, to volunteers and equipment, from crisis to crisis, and the degree of cooperation between all the organising clubs (spearheaded by LVO) showed total commitment to the JK as a showcase for orienteering and for Northern Ireland.
There were very many obstacles to be overcome along that way and the organising team was very fortunate to be able to draw on the talents of organisers like Colin Henderson, planners like Bill Simpson, Igor Stefko, Wilbert Hollinger, Greg McCann and Philip Baxter, and many others, all shepherded along by the unflappable Harold White. Several retired orienteers came to see the Festival in full swing or help at the events, and it was great to see the elder statesmen of Irish orienteering like Ernie Wilson meeting Seán Rothery and Wilbert Hollimger, or Freddie McCann back to help at the Relays.
The competitors' comments were very positive: "A great JK", "One of the best I have been to", "Fantastic orienteering", and no doubt the plaudits will continue to come in.
So: Hats off to NIOA for staging a really outstanding JK! You can read more about it, with results and reviews, on Nope Sport here, on the BOF web site here, and the full results are on the JK2011 web site here.
The JK Trophy was won by Scotland's Interlopers, with the British Army team taking the women's relay title.
Read about the Sprint here, Day 2 at Tyrella here, Day 3 at Slieve Croob here and the Relays here.
Next year's JK will be in Scotland on April 6-9 2012, largely in Perthshire.
There is no truth in the rumour that, since Jan Kjellstrom Orienteering Festival over the Easter weekend in Belfast and Co. Down was such a success, the name of the event will be changed to the Seán McEllistrim O-festival ...

Some of the Irish highlights of the results were:

Sprint: Rúairí Long 1st M12; Bill Edwards 2nd M40; Caoimhe O'Boyle 2nd W14; Niamh Corbett 4th W16; Faye Pinker 3rd W35;
Individual: Jonathan Quinn 4th M16A; James Logue 1st M40L, Bill Edwards 2nd M40L; Aonghus OCléirigh 5th M50L; Frank Martindale 4th M75L; Caoimhe O'Boyle 1st W14A; Ruth Lynam 2nd W55L; Clare Nuttall 2nd W70L; Faith White 3rd W75.
Relays: CorkO finished 8th in the Women's Open (Toni O'Donovan, Aislinn Austin,Faye Pinker); LVO won the Under 40 Junior Relay (Frazer Howe, Eoghan Knight, Paul Pruzina); 3ROC finished 4th in the Mini Relay (Clodagh Moran, Cian May, Aidan McCullough) and 4th in the biggest class, the Mixed Ad Hoc (Mary O'Connell, Cliona McCullough, Eoin McCullough).

Ivan Millar reports:

Irish perform well at home JK

Irish senior orienteers performed well at the JK2011. following 3 hotly contested races 5 senior team members have been selected for WOC in France.

The sprint event on Friday saw a very tough challenge through the buildings of Queens and Stranmillis college. The top 3 Irish Men and Women were:

Mens:
Nicolas Simonin - 15.03
Seamus O'Boyle - 15.24
David Healy - 15.26

Womens:
Niamh O'Boyle - 15.09
Toni O'Donovan - 16.03
Ciara Largey - 17.02

Saturday brought the extra challenge of Sunny conditions and the intricate contour detail of Tyrella sand dunes. Top Irish were:

Mens:
David Healy - 37.36
Marcus Pinker - 40.00
Nicolas Simonin - 41.47

Womens:
Niamh O'Boyle - 42.06
Toni O'Donovan - 42.50
Ciara Largey - 43.56

Sunday saw some classic Irish mountain orienteering with the festival visiting Slieve Croob. Top 3 Irish were:

Mens:
Nicolas Simonin - 82.04
David Healy - 86.16
Marcus Pinker - 86.20

Womens:
Toni O'Donovan - 71.21
Ciara Largey - 73.45
Aislinn Austin - 87.13

There were many other solid performances by the Irish seniors. Overall results were very pleasing and provide evidence of real progress in the build up to the summers major competitions.

JK Snippets:

Did anyone hear or see the cuckoos at Tyrella at the weekend? They were in good voice at the western end of the area for the relays.
Competitors were probably unaware of some last-minute changes to courses at Slieve Croob: on the Wednesday before the event access was lost to part of the area and three courses had to be replanned, controlled, and new sites selected, maps reprinted and bagged and control descriptions prepared in time for Sunday ... this was on top of losing the only patch forest in the whole JK weekend across the road from the Slieve Croob starts because of breeding birds.

Some JK photos:

Stranmillis Sprint Arena

Seán Knight, Leslie Coughlan and Jack Millar go for the line.

The sun shines at Tyrella

Slieve Croob Finish

JK Trophy mass start at the Relays

Dara OCléirigh hands over to Róisín Long (Ajax)

Waiting for changeover

Rúairí Short hands over to Colm Hill (CNOC)

Former World Champion Jorgen Martensson, one of our distinguished visitors.

See more JK photos, taken by Simon Errington, here.

April 2011

2011-04-05T23:52:00.008+01:00

Harold White, Olivia Baxter, Charle Reid and Stephen Gilmore are among the group to launch the JK Sprint race at Stranmillis College, Belfast.

Fermanagh event cancelled

The planned event on the Tuesday after the JK (the day after the Relays) has been cancelled because Fermanagh Orienteers' involvement in the JK weekend would overstretch the small club too much. However, you can still run on Wednesday and Thursday in the Mournes before heading southwards to the Irish Championships.

JK entries still open

Even though the official closing date for the JK individual events has passed, limited entries are still available up to the limit of printed maps. These late entries will cost £2 per day on top of the normal entry fee - see the Sportident web site for details here.

Support the Irish Junior Squad

If you're going to the JK, there are two opportunities to support the Irish Junior Squad: through going to the Table Quiz on Saturday evening at Stranmillis in Belfast, scene of the Sprint the previous day, or by buying one of the JK hoodies and sweatshirts available on the event website via Sportident. You can sign up for the quiz at the event, but you need to order the tops in advance as they are being made to order. Details here.

The Junior Squad has runners from all parts of the country and promotes technical and fitness training for young orienteers. Squad members will travel to the European Youth O-Champs in the Czech Republic in June, to the Junior World Champs in Poland in July, to the World Championships in France in August and to the Junior Home International in faraway Fermanagh September. The kids (or parents) have to put up most of the money for these trips, so every bit of help from the O-community is really appreciated.

Countdown to IOC2011
Less than four weeks to go to the premier event in the Irish O-Calendar! With the hype surrounding the JK, it may be easy to overlook the Irish Championships a week later, but the combination of the two events has been a bonus for them both. Entries for IOC have topped 400 with two days to go before entries close, but Relay entries have still to pass the 50 mark. Relays can be great fun, so if you've never tried one, get together with your friends or clubmates and give it a lash. The number of relay classes has been reduced to seven, so it's not as complex as it once was and there fill be a good number in each category.
The Middle Distance race on Saturday 30th April at Glendoo Ridge East, on the Dublin/Wicklow border between Glencullen and Glencree, will feature open mountain with old turf cuttings, and the Relay on the Bank Holiday Monday will return to the adjacent Wicklow side of the ridge facing into Glencree. The organisers recomment bringing binoculars as much of the competition area is visible from the changeover area: every control a spectator control!
Sandwiched between the two is the Classic race at Mall Hill/Brockagh, close to Laragh and Glendalough. Previous maps of the area can be seen on Routegadget from the IOC web page here. The ground is more runnable but boulder-strewn in comparison to the other two days, and GEN have kindly provided the map and terrain since the original area was declared out of bounds due to breeding birds.
Full details of the event here.

25 Years Ago

Most of the issues of The Irish Orienteer published between 1982 and 2008 have now been scanned and should shortly be available as pdf documents on the IOA web site, thanks largely to Brian Hollinshead who undertook the scanning. As a taster, here are some snippets from 1986:

The Irish Championships at Slieve Croob on April 26/27 (see JK2011) were won by the AJAX pair of Peter Kernan and Orla Cooke. Brian Corbett was 9 seconds adrift in the men's race. A good run by Marcus Pinker saw him take the M11 title! Curragh won the Men's Relay and GEN the Women's.

The cover of the first issue of the year showed Eileen Loughman running through the bush at the 1985 World Championships in Australia. Roxanne White was the only other Irish representative.
A letter of appreciation from Gareth Murphy in Dublin praised a recent string course he had done: "Dear John I enjoyed doing the string course I liked the animals I liked the bear best". Aonghus ÓCléirigh introduced "Grandslam Orienteering" with a mass start event on a lovely little map of the sand dunes at Portmarnock, sadly now a golf course. The third "Irish Orienteer Trophy" inter-club knockout competition ran in 2006, based on the UK CompassSport Cup. UCD Orienteers (also known as Belfield Orienteers, BO) celebrated their 10th anniversary. They were UCDOC but became UCDO when people used to ask "What's UCDOC?" in their best Bugs Bunny voice.

Preparations were under way for the Continental Cup and the World Military O-Championships, both to be held in Wicklow. At the IOA AGM in Wesley College, Dublin, Connacht Chairman Frank Ryan expressed the view that the sport in the province was in the doldrums (but it still survives today). The International O-Federation was celebrating its 25th birthday. A party of Swedes, led by Peo Bengtsson, visited Ireland in the week after the JK and ran in a series of specially staged events. National Orienteering Day (with introductory events across the country) was on October 5th.

The Moving Crag controversy was revisited by Curragh Orienteers and Niall Rice who had a difference of opinion at a Grade 1 event in Stradbally in May 1983 (the first event where homogenised milk was given to finishers) when a control wasn't in the expected location. This was the cause of considerable controversy in IOA for some time.

Happy times!

Phoenix Park Time Trial is no more

For several years the Irish Junior Squad has been running time trial fitness tests in the Furry Glen in Dublin's Phoenix Park, on a route involving hills, tracks, mud, trees and streams. The Office of Public Works have called a halt, though, because of concerns about environmental damage in the area, though this was hardly caused by a group of orienteers running there a couple of times a year. The March time trials are likely to be the last, but the Park may yet provide an alternative.

You can see the results of the time trials over the years at the Junior Team web site here.

Ivan's Long-O series a success

In a return to old-style orienteering with a 21st century twist, Ivan Millar organised a series of three Long orienteering events using 1:15000 maps to give the Elites and prospective Elites a chance to run longer courses on this scale of map in preparation for races like the Workd Junior Championships and the World Championships where running times in excess of two hours are common.

The events are Gortalougheny, Co. Fermanagh, Carlingford, Co. Louth and Tollymore, Co. Down, attracted good crowds whio certainly got value for money. CNOC's Colm Hill took the top spot on the Men's long course, with Ciara Largey (FermO/QUBOC) took the ladies prize.

Full results and information here.

JK Concert
A first for this year's JK is a concert featuring the groups Bearna and Bethany in the elegant Slieve Donard Hotel in Newcastle on Easter Sunday evening, feet will be tapping and jivers jumpin' to Lambeg and bodhrán at the JK social.
The music will be preceded by the Routegadget sessions where winners and losers dissect their routes, and the evening will feature other music and entertainment plus the prizegiving for the Trail-O events.
The organisers would prefer people to but a ticket beforehand, though they will be on sale over the weekend too. Tickets are only £7 for adults and £3 for children. Buy tickets online at the Sportident website here. Incidentally, JK entries have reached almost 2100 with a very high percentage running the sprint race as well as the conventional terrain races.
It turns out that it's not "Different Drums" after all!

Closing date reminders

JK relays 7th April

Irish Championships 8th April

Shamrock O-Ringen 6th May

Would anyone care to do a report on the recent Leinster Championships for us?

Sudden Oak Death affects Larch

2011-03-27T18:35:00.024+01:00

Sudden Oak Death

Cad a dhéanfaimid feasta gan adhmad?
Tá deireadh na gcoillte ar lár;
níl trácht ar Chill Chais ná ar a teaghlach
is ní bainfear a cling go bráth.

Now what will we do for timber,
With the last of the woods laid low?
There's no talk of Kilcash or its household
And its bell will be struck no more.

You may have seen where the March Mountain Bike O-event at Clonmore North, Cahir, Co. Tipperary had to be abandoned because Sudden Oak Death has been found in forests in the area. Appropriately enough, the Lament for Kilcash, on the slopes of Slievenamon, ostensibly deals with deforestation in the same area in an earlier era, though really referring to the decline of the Butlers, one of the old noble families of Munster.
Curiously, the disease in Ireland seems to affect Japanese larch, beech and Noble fir trees rather than oak, but it is caused by phytophthora ramorum, a disease related to potato blight, a fungal plant disease of which Irish people will be very aware for historical reasons.
The disease has been found in forests in Northern Ireland and has also had an impact on orienteering there. One problem with the disease is diagnosis: as it affects the larch, which loses its leaves in the winter even though it's a conifer, it is not until the spring that the disease shows up when the tree fails to grow. Signs of ooozing sap and obvious wounds on the trees are also an indication that the disease has struck.
The disease is spread by wind and rain and trees which are close to laurel thickets seem to be particularly at risk. Previously it has affected rhododendrons rather than larch.
Nobody seems to know what to do to deal with it. One drastic solution is to fell the affected forest; another is to ban public access, either all together or to restrict people to roads: either of these could have a major effect on orienteering - remember foot and mouth disease in 2001?
Read what The Irish Times had to report on the disease last August here. Visit Suddenoakdeath.org here.

On 31st March 2011 the Department of Agriculture issued this press release:

Department gives update on Phytophthora ramorum Monitoring

The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine is continuing to survey forests and control outbreaks of the EU regulated plant disease Phytophthora ramorum, a fungus like organism that can damage and kill infected trees and plants. Under EU requirements, annual forest surveys for Phytophthora ramorum have been ongoing since 2003. Until last year, there had been no findings on tree species and P. ramorum had only been detected in forest areas on wild invasive rhododendron shrubs. Following the initial findings in Japanese larch in Ireland in July 2010, an extensive national aerial and ground survey was conducted. These forest surveys have now confirmed the disease in Japanese larch at eleven forest locations in five counties.

Japanese larch appears to be particularly susceptible to the disease, affecting all age classes and locally causing significant dieback and deaths. Noble fir, beech and Spanish chestnut growing in close proximity to the infected Japanese larch have also been found to be infected at a number of the sites and it is likely that the Japanese larch is the source of the infection. The infected trees are being removed to prevent the disease spreading.

There has also been a recent scientifically confirmed finding of P. ramorum in a single Sitka spruce tree. The infected young tree is approximately two metres in height and significantly it was growing in close proximity and underneath the canopy of a large infected rhododendron bush. It is very likely that disease spores produced by this overhanging infected rhododendron bush were the source of infection of the tree. This is the first field record worldwide of P. ramorum infection in Sitka spruce although the species had been found to be susceptible in international laboratory trials. Spruce in the immediate area of all the Japanese larch outbreak sites have been surveyed and no further P. ramorum infections have been found. The area around the infected Sitka spruce has been effectively quarantined and monitoring will continue.

There has also been significant number of outbreaks of the disease particularly in Japanese larch in Northern Ireland and Great Britain and the Department is liaising closely with the relevant authorities.

The Department continues to take all necessary measures to establish the extent of the infection and to control the spread of the disease. Forest owners are requested to be particularly vigilant and as the summer growing season commences to report any unusual symptoms of ill health in larch or other species to the Forest Service of the Department. For further information on the disease please see www.agriculture.gov.ie/forestservice

New EastWest Map of Wicklow

Barry Dalby of EastWest Mapping in Co. Wexford, has just published the fourth map of the Dublin/Wicklow mountains, a companion for his earlier maps of West Wicklow, Dublin/Wicklow and Lugnaquilla. All the maps are on Pretex waterproof paper at 1:30 000 scale with 10 m contours and retail at €9.95. They show a lot of historical and archaeological information as well as detail of more immediate importance to the walker, runner or cyclist. There's a special offer for all four maps as a package. Details here.

No Irish Sprint Champs before the Summer

On top of the twelve Days of O you've already read about, there was to be a new kid on the block: the Irish Sprint Championships at UCD, Belfield, in Dublin 4's leafy suburbs, on the eve of the Irish Championships. However, permission from the college authorities is slow to come so the event won't go ahead in April. Planner Laurence Quinn (GEN) hopes that the event will go on in the autumn, in association with a weekend of orienteering in Leinster. We've had Irish Sprint Championships before (two years ago at the Shamrock O-Ringen, the race was at Ross Island, Killarney in a small rocky complex forest with ancient copper mines; last year it was in the NUU Campus at Coleraine). This year - when it happens - will be more like the mixed urban terrain being commonly used for sprint-O. Watch this space! In the meantime, take a day's rest between the JK and the Irish Championships.

JK2000?

Will entries for the JK at Easter top 2000? Today they are at 1956 with four days to go ... Remember that the deadline for JK2011 entries is 31st March and for Relay entries is 7th April. Relay entries have to be made separately on the SportIdent website. See here for details.

Irish Championships entries close soon

Entries for the Irish Champs (both individual and relay) close on Friday 8th April: details here.

Leinster Champs return to Glencree next weekend

GEN run the Leinster Championships in Glencree next Sunday. The terrain is a mixture of steep forest, steep open craggy mountainside, and rough open not-so-steep mountain: hence the courses are rather shorter than you might expect, at least on paper. Start lists and event details are on the LOC2011 web site here.

Shamrock O-Ringen entries close May 6th

The Shamrock O-Ringen 3-Day on the wonderful Sheep's Head peninsula in West Cork is on the Bank Holiday weekend at the beginning of June and entries close on May 6th. However, because of parking and logistical issues, if the entries exceed what the organisers can deal with, entries will close before this, so enter early to be sure of a place! Details here.

March News

2011-03-02T00:10:00.006Z

JK Deadline Approaches
Entries for the Jan Kjellstrom O-Fest in Northern Ireland at Easter have topped 1800 but IOA-based orienteers have only managed 165 entries at the last count. These entries are up on 2010 in Devon, but with such a major event just up the road, it's a shame not to take full advantage and enjoy Britain's premier O-event on your doorstep. Entries close on March 31st and Good Friday's sprint-O time slots are filling up fast, so enter now.
In addition to the main Sprint, two Individual and Relay events, there is Trail-O (fiendishly clever courses set by a certain Alan Gartside have Trail-O enthusiasts coming from all over Europe to see if they can get the better of The Man) , TempO (a bit like timed trail-O), String courses for the smallest kids, and a series of other ancillary orienteering and fell races over 12 days. Two of the JK races (Sprint and Classic at Slieve Croob) are also IOF World Ranking Events, a chance for our Elites to pick up WRE points. Incidentally, sprint entries are up a lot on last year's JK, particularly in the older age classes who are discovering the fun of sprint-O: it's mind over matter: sprint-O for the mind, not just the body!
There are large groups coming from Sweden and Norway and orienteers from another 15 countries, some staying for the Irish Champs and some even staying as long as the Shamrock O-Ringen in June! Australia, Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Portugal, Switzerland and Sweden are all represented, as well as the UK and Ireland.

Did you know that the Legananny Dolmen is on the slopes of Slieve Croob (JK Day 3) where the 1986 Irish Champs were run on the weekend of the Chernobyl nuclear plant explosion?

The Twelve Days of O
Remember that there are twelve days of orienteering associated with the JK and the Irish Championships, from QUBOC's Sprint race in the Botanic Gardens area of Belfast on Thursday 21st Aptil to the Irish Relay Champs on Monday 3nd May, so make Ireland your orienteering destination this spring. See JK details here; Irish Champs details here; Shamrock O-Ringen details here.
The omens are good for the Irish Sprint Championships in Dublin on Friday April 29th but the details have to be finalised before it's made official.

Volunteers still needed

The scale of the Jan Kjellstrom weekend is several orders of magnitude greater than anything we have seen before and the organisers need all the help they can get. The number of jobs is endless, from ones involving no knowledge of orienteering up. Please, if you can help at all, get in touch with the JK organisers and volunteer, even for a day or for a specific job, or organise a group from your club to help. If you have non-orienteering friends or family, get them involved too.
Several clubs have been designated as the start team, with a rota so they can run too; Cork O are doing the download and results; the main bulk of the work is falling on the three Northern clubs, North West OC, Fermanagh Orienteers and, of course, Lagan Valley Orienteers, who have put in months of hard work to bring the project this far.
Seriously, time is running out and volunteers are genuinely needed. You're not being asked to give blood, just sweat and tears!

JK Hoodies and Sweatshirts now available

The Irish Junior Squad will be selling JK hoodies and sweatshirts to raise money for their squad training and tours. The tops are available in a range of colours (blue, red, green, grey and black) and sizes. They should be ordered in advance at the JK entries page and picked up at the event. Irish Juniors have been warned only to get the green ones! Hoodies and sweatshirts have to be ordered by 31st March. See the JK entries web site here.

JK Entertainment too!

A 4-star hotel is the venue for a unique night's entertainment to round off the festival aspect of this year's JK. The ballroom of the sumptuous Slieve Donard Hotel in Newcastle (where the Mountains of Mourne sweep down to the sea) has been taken over for the Trail O prizegiving and a major concert and night's entertainment on the Sunday night, before the Relays on the final day of the festival.
Tickets for this extravaganza (including Routegadget presentations of winners' routes, inspired by the Shamrock Sessions) should be booked on the JK entries web site here. Adults £7, under-12's £3.

The Slieve Donard was opened in 1898 as a luxury hotel at the terminus of the Belfast and Co. Down Railway, attracting visitors to the spectacular scenery of Newcastle.
Please remove muddy O-shoes before entering the hotel!

Some March 2011 Dates for your diary: full details on the IOA/NIOA Fixtures Lists.

6th         2010 Munster Championships, intricate extensive sand dunes, Inch, Co. Kerry
7th         Final date for cheap Leinster Champs entries. See here.
12-13th Junior Squad training weekend, Dublin
13th        Bull Island, Dublin. Leinster League event on fast sand dunes.
14th        Leinster Champs entries close.
19th        Mountain Bike O, Clonmore North, Cahir, Co. Tipperary: CANCELLED. See note below.
20th        Final Long-O event for experienced orienteers, Tollymore, Co. Down
26th        Northern Ireland Score Championships, Belvoir Park, Belfast
31st        JK 2011 entries close
April 3 Leinster Championships, Glencree, Co. Wicklow

Spring News

2011-02-17T23:51:00.003Z

The birds have started to sing, which is a sign of spring, but they also bring bad news for orienteers. Breeding birds of prey in the only forest section to be used on Slieve Croob at JK2011 and on the area for the Classic race at the Irish Championships have caused access problems. However, all is not lost: some judicious replanning of courses will be necessary for the Elites at the JK but the effects on Ajax's IOC are more serious so the competition has been moved to Brockagh Mountain/Mall Hill , near Laragh in Co. Wicklow, courtesy of GEN.
It's easy to be wise after the event, but perhaps the name of the IOC area, Carraig Na Seabhac ('Rock of the Hawks') might have given a clue ...
Full details of these changes can be read at the IOC web site here. For details of JK2011, see here. JK entry fees increase on Sunday 27th February.

Thu Apr 21st, Belfast Queen's Sprint
Fri Apr 22nd, Belfast JK Sprint
Sat Apr 23rd, Co. Down JK Middle/Long
Sun Apr 24th, Co. Down JK Long
Mon Apr 25th, Co. Down JK Relay
Tue Apr 26th, Co. Fermanagh Gortalughany Colour
Wed Apr 27th, Co. Down Mournes Colour
Thu Apr 28th, Co. Down Mournes Colour
Sat Apr 30th – IOC Middle, Co. Wicklow
Sat Apr 30th – Mini-O
Sun May 1st – IOC Classic
Mon May 2nd – IOC Relay

There are also two fell races in the Mournes on the two Thursday evenings and a pre-IOC training event is planned at Scarr, near Laragh: more details later!

Have you entered the JK and IOC yet? There are almost 200 runners entered for IOC and more than 1700 for the JK. With all the on-line entries, it's easy to overlook one (like the Munster Championships, now on the magnificent sand dunes of Inch, Co. Kerry (see photo) on March 6th, and the Leinster Championships in Glencree, Co. Wicklow, on April 3rd. - cheapest entries to March 7th.)

Other interesting events coming up include some mountain-bike orienteering in Munster organised by CorkO on 26th February in the Nagles Mountains, near Fermoy, and on 19th March (at Clonmore North, Cahir).

Meanwhile, Setanta's Seán Hassett is trying to coordinate Leinster fixtures for the rest of the year. He hopes that there will be some MTB-O events in Leinster too.

The Northern Ireland Night Championships will be in the University of Ulster, Coleraine on February 19th - remember the IOC Sprint race last year?

In Leinster, Fingal again push the envelope northwards with an event on February 20th at Derrycassin, Co. Longford, a companion for their maps in Meath, Cavan and Monaghan.

For Elites and aspiring Elites, Ivan Millar's Long-O series continues at Carlingford on February 27th and Tollymore/Meelmore on March 20th. These races are only for experienced and fit orienteers who need to get practice running on 1:15000 scale maps, although a shorter-but-still-difficult course will also be available.

On the subject of aspiring elites, IOA are running a Junior Squad Training Weekend in Leinster on March 12/13, with the uausl gut-busting time trials in the Furry Glen in Dublin's Phoenix Park on the Saturday and Ajax's Bull Island event in the subtle sand dunes on Sunday. Unfortunately the Saturday clashes with the All Ireland Schools and Colleges Cross Country Championships, also in Dublin.

On March 26th the NI Score Championships will be run in the Lagan Valley Regional Park in Belfast.

More to follow ... Incidentally, the movie theme (The Birds; Ryan's Daughter - filmed at Inch) in this edition is coincidental, but can anyone think of some more movie references relevant to orienteering? Lost? A Walk in the Sun? Maybe "Gone with the Wind" when all your controls blow away? Dumb-O? Into the West? Send them in!

New Year 2011

2011-01-20T23:15:00.000Z

2011 Events Preview
Here we are at the start of possibly the biggest year ever in Irish Orienteering: as well as all the usual highlights, we have a week full of outstanding competitions in April and May with the Jan Kjellstrom and the Irish Championships back to back. Online entries are open for both competitions and cheap entries are still available - don't forget to enter!
As well as some great competitions at home (regional championships, Junior Home International, Shamrock O-Ringen), there's the World Championships in France, the Scottish 6-Day and many other big competitions. Here we preview some of the year's activities.
This feature is being added to day by day, so do drop in from time to time to see what else has been added!

Ireland

The 2010 Munster Championships are at Rossbeigh, Co. Kerry on 6th March (postponed from last Autumn), doubtless running the 2010 age classes. The Leinster Championships in April return to the Glencree area of Wicklow where GEN are hosting the event on the 3rd. Hot on the heels of the Leinsters we have the Jan Kellstrom O-Festival 2011 in Belfast and Co. Down. If you've never been to the JK, British Orienteering's premier event, now is your chance. Details here. No planes, no ferries, no hassle: the organisers are even laying on buses to the events for anyone who isn't travelling by car. Training, Sprint-O at Stranmillis in Belfast, classic distance races on the dunes of Tyrella and the slopes of Slieve Croob (scene of IOC'86), followed by relays again at Tyrella, plus Trail-O, then colour events during the week and training at Carlingford and Scarr on the way to Ajax's Irish Championships on the Dublin/Wicklow border. See here. What a week!
Then, on June 4-5-6 we have Cork Orienteers running another Shamrock O-Ringen on the wonderful Sheep's Head peninsula of West Cork, with Setanta's 24-hour Rogaine in Wicklow on June 25th. Shamrock entries close on May 6th but may be closed earlier if parking etc becomes a problem, so enter early!
After the summer, the Junior Home International is in Fermanagh in September, then the 2011 Munster Championships on October 30th and the Connacht Championships on November 27th - more details of these closer to the time. Two Munster Champs in one year - is this a record?

A great place to start your search is at the World of Orienteering website here. If you prefer things on the printed page, you need to subscvribe to the excellent CompassSport magazine (see here), which publishes event information and an annual review of major events.

Britain

Orienteering travellers will be interested in the Scottish 6-Day at Oban on July 31 - August 6th. Details here. This is one of the more popular holiday events with runners from all over Europe, and is pretty accessible by plane or ferry. Scottish terrain is challenging and varied, with open mountainside, natural forest and plantation, with great competition in every class and plenty to do when not orienteering.
Apart from this, there are major events around the country and details are all on the British Orienteering web site here. They include National Events in Norfolk on 19/20 February (incorporating the Midland Championships), the Southern Championships near Henley on March 13th, the Northern Championships near Newcastle on March 27th, British Championships at Sheffield on May 14th/15th, and the Scottish Championships near Comrie on 27th May.
The City of London race (run in streets and parks but longer than a sprint) is on 10th September and is acquiring a reputation as a "must-do" event, rather like the Venice street-O. Details here.

Europe

At the top of the orienteering tree is the World Championships, this year in France in August. WOC2011 10-20 August, Savoie Grand Revard, near Chambery in SE France. Details here. There's a series of open events on during the WOC from August 14-20th - details here. Cheaper entries are available before May 1st but beware - the rules in France state that you have to have a recent medical certificate in order to compete there.
Earlier, we have the Portugese O-Meeting on 3-8 March, this year inland (last year's was close to the coast). Details here. It's around Portalegre on the east side of Portugal but unfortunately it doesn't coincide with the schools mid-term as it's tied to the start of Lent. It's followed by a World Ranking event at Evora, near Lisbon, on March 11-13. Details here. Curiously, there's another WRE in Spain on the same days, near Valencia. See here. Allan Bogle's "Active Canaria" are running training on Grand Canaria there's a 3-Dayon February 11-13: details here.
Further north, the Spring Cup in Denmark marks the end of hibernation for the Scandinavians and is popular with Irish and British runners. The three day competition at Roskilde features a night relay, night sprint, individual and relay races on March 21-23. Details here.
If you'd prefer something a bit warmer, the Mediterranean O-Champs is on at the same time in Sicily with all the events close together. Details here.

One superb orienteering area is around Asiago in Trentino, northern Italy, where the Highlands Open and Italian Middle Distance Championships are on 14/15 May, with a training camp during the week before it. See where John Feehan runs! Details here.
Moving towards the summer,and just after our own Shamrock O-|Ringen, you might be tempted by the Belgian 3-Day on June 11-13 near Charleroi (Ryanair). A week later, the Jukola 7-person overnight relay in Finland, is at Salpa, 15 km from the Russian border and only 2 hours from St Petersburg. They expect 16000 runners and 40000 visitors: a fantastic weekend.
July is peak season for multi-day holiday events, and Kainuu Week in Finland may be worth a look. Its on July 3-8 at Kuhmo, but it's 600 km from Helsinki. More realistic is the Finnish 5-Day Fin-5 from July 11-16, only 50 km west of Helsinki. The O-Ringen (Swedish 5-Day) is at Mohed in Halsingland (250 km north of Stockholm) from July 24-29: is it the biggest sporting event in the world? There is a large choice of classes and competition types: teams, kids, beginners etc, so there's something for everyone, not just the elites. Details here.

Elsewhere

For those of you in the Defence Forces, the CISM World Military O-Championships are in Brazil in July, as part of the World Military Games. Details here.

Mapping Meeting

Club Mapping Officers were invited to a LIDAR/GPS workshop on Saturday 15th January 2011 at Lumville House, The Curragh, Co. Kildare. The workshop covered the use of LIDAR and GPS in the production of orienteering maps. The IOA LIDAR project, which involves the procurement of LIDAR data, was explained, with a practical demonstration of its application along with the use of GPS devices, plus a discussion on the map registration process and a proposal on how the current system can be improved. I hope we'll get a report on the meeting for you to read.

IOC Sprint Race - A Missed Opportunity?

With a fantastic week's orienteering in store at the end of April, starting with the JK and ending with the Irish Championships, what a pity that nobody has undertaken to run an Irish Sprint-O Championships. The JK Sprint race at Stranmillis in Belfast will kick off the JK Festival, but wouldn't it be great to have an Irish Sprint Championships the following Friday to launch IOC2011?
Belfield campus in Dublin would be a great location, as there's an existing map and a good range of terrains from buildings to open land and forest. Would it need an ISSOM map or would the existing map be enough?
Sprint-O races are great spectator events and give an intense mental and physical workout where tenths of seconds can make all the difference between podium and odium.
Any takers? There's still three months to go ...

New International Rules Published by IOF

From January 1st 2011 there are new rules for international orienteering events. You can read them on the International Orienteering Federation web site here. These rules will also form the basis for national rules in member countries.

Joss Lynam 1924-2011

2011-01-09T23:26:00.003Z

Joss Lynam was one of the founders of Irish orienteering back in the 1960's. Before that he had been a founding member of the Irish Mountaineering Club and the Association for Adventure Sports (AFAS). He spent a lifetime working for outdoor activities and adventure sports, taking up kyaking in his '40's, climbing in the Alps and the Himalaya, writing multiple guidebooks to mountaineering and hillwalking in Ireland, editing the IMC journal "Mountain Log" for many years.
No doubt there will be many eloquent and glowing tributes to Joss, but for my part I came to know him first through AFAS and our respective editorships of the mountaineering and orienteering newsletters. Joss was ahead of his time in buying an early Macintosh computer back in the early '80's and I followed suit after seeing his.
He had a comprehensive collection of books and maps and was always happy to share his knowledge. I had enormous respect for him: the effort he put in to keeping Tiglin Adventure Centre running on a shoestring, the enthusiasm he showed for projects like the long distance walks and other Sports Council projects was remarkable.
In orienteering terms Joss was a well known face at events in Leinster and further afield; as an engineer he had an interest in surveying and put his skills to good use to produce some of our earliest orienteering maps and the first colour O-maps in Ireland.
Joss was a founder member of Irish Orienteers, the original Irish O-club, and later of Three Rock OC whose AGM he, and his wife Nora, rarely missed. He was recently in touch about the annual Christmas Score event run by 3ROC to apologise for not being able to help.
Joss's orienteering legacy lives on through his daughter, Ruth, the IOA Junior Affairs Officer, and her sons Ruairí and Conor Short.
Our sympathy goes to his wife, Nora, daughters Ruth and Clodagh and their families.
Joss died on 9th January 2011. May he rest in peace.

Event Postponements

2010-12-23T14:16:00.000Z

Due to the severe weather, the 3ROC Xmas Score event on St Stephen's Day has been put back a week to Sunday 2nd January 2011. The situation will be reviewed closer to that day if there are still travel difficulties.

The NWOC Christmas event at Ballykelly Wood has been put back to Monday January 3rd.

No news about Currabinny or Ballincollig Park on December 27th, but check with the organisers before you travel.

Some of the Goal Mile runs on Christmas day have also been cancelled (Belfield in Dublin for one).

Still, if you can make it outdoors over Christmas, you could try a permanent O-course: download the maps at coillteoutdoors.ie

In the meantime, Happy Christmas!

The annual TIO preview of interesting 2011 competitions is in preparation. If you have any suggestions (Greenland, anyone?) please e-mail theirishorienteer@gmail.com

John McC.

Snow shoes? - O-shoes!

2010-12-01T00:45:00.053Z

Bothered by the weather? Just get your O-shoes on and get out running. You'll be the fastest, safest people around ...

December Events
Check that the event is on before you travel!
With an eye on the weather, the fixtures plans are for the final Leinster League race of 2010 at the Curragh, Co. Kildare on Sunday December 12th, preceded by the first Dublin by Night event at St Anne's Park, Raheny on Tuesday 7th. Maybe there'll be a special Ski-O class at these?
WATO's event at Carrickbyrne on Sunday 5th has been cancelled and the Curragh event has been put back to the 12th because of the snow but with a small-scale mass start score event on the Curragh at 12.00 on the 5th if you want a run..
British course planning guru Graham Nilsen is due to give a course planning course on Saturday December 4th in Bewleys' Hotel at Newlands Cross in Dublin and there are still a couple of places available.
Later in the month the final Munster League event is scheduled for Kilworth on the 11th; more local events in Munster are listed on the fixtures list here. For NIOA events see here.

Connacht Championships 2010

Western Eagles ran the Connacht Championships at the end of November, returning to Portumna forest on the banks of the Shannon in Co. Galway. The snowfalls affecting coastal areas gave Portumna a miss and conditions on the day were cold and dry. The forest is an unusual one - flat and largely runnable with a network of roads. The map had a somewhat unusual colour scheme (dark browns and purple-blues) and variable readability. Looking at the 1996 Irish Relay Championships map of the same area showed that clarity has been lost in the current, computer-produced version.
Yet again, one has to marvel at how the handful of orienteers in the west can keep the sport alive, and full credit to Frank Ryan and the other WEGO members for running the event. Nevertheless (at the risk of being branded overcritical) more use could perhaps have been made of the area by adding butterflies and loops in the most interesting parts of the forest, instead of so much road running, though there may have been other factors and constraints on planning that the competitors were unaware of.
The men's course of 11.3 km saw Cork's Marcus Pinker take top spot in 68.33 from 3ROC's Ger Butler and CNOC's Ruairi Short, in a field of 15 finishers. Sharon Lucey (FermO) won the 9 km W21 Long course in 79.17 followed by Niamh Morrissey (DFO) and Ruth Lynam (CNOC).
Closest finish of the day was in M18 where Cillín Corbett (CorkO) had a mere 9 seconds to spare over GEN's Laurence Quinn.
Full results are here.

Christmas Presents

Looking for ideas for the orienteer in your life? How about a new, faster SportIdent card for shaving those precious seconds off your orienteering times? See here for details.
What about a new pair of O-shoes? You can try on a pair at any event attended by our own Pat Healy. Contact Pat at healy.pat@gmail.com

Carol McNeill, multiple British Champion and World Champion team member, has written a new book on orienteering: Orienteering Skills, Techniques, Training. Carol works as an outdoors instructor and has vast experience of coaching and competition. STG£7.99 + postage. Details here. [In a previous book of Carol's the gremlins got to work and produced something along the lines of "Running through the forest and finding the red and white controls never ceases to lose its appeal", which is the opposite of what she meant!]

If you want an outdoors book, have a look at "Terrain Training for Off -Road Runners" and "An Introduction to Trail and Fell Running" by Kevin Shevels. (Details here). The web site also has esoteric books on uphill and downhill running techniques, and navigation for off-road runners.
Thinking of taking in a major event but don't want the hassle and expense of travel? Treat yourself to Easter 2011 at the Jan Kjellstrom O-Festival, coming to Belfast and Co. Down in April. Enter from one to four days of competition here. See jk2011.org.uk for full details. Take in the Trail Orienteering, and then the colour events and training in Louth and Wicklow to bring you through to the Irish Championships in Wicklow the next weekend ...
At a loose end over Christmas? There's orienteering at Three Rock Wood, Dundrum, Dublin on St Stephen's Day; at Currabinny Wood (Cork) and Ballincollig Regional Park (Cork) on the 27th, and there may be some hill races around then too. Not to mention the Goal Mile runs, mostly on Christmas Day. (Details here).
Or how about a subscription to CompassSport magazine? Britain's national orienteering magazine, edited by Swedish-based Nick Barrable, has an increasingly international flavour. Details here.

The Forest Sport

Remember when orienteering was known as the Forest Sport? Maybe that was before photogrammetry allowed us to map complex open areas and we moved out of the trees. Coillte, the state forestry organisation, are doing their best to entice us back into the woods, by cooperating with local orienteering clubs to instal permanent orienteering courses in state forests around the country.
Five areas have been set up in the Dublin area, jointly between Coillte, O-clubs and the Dublin Mountains Partnership: Hellfire Wood, the adjacent Massy's Estate, Carrickgolligan and Barnaslingan IKilternan) are already operating and Ticknock (Three Rock Mountain) is about to go live. Other POC's are at Avondale (Wicklow), Farran (Cork), Lough Key (Roscommon), Donadea (Kildare) and Currah Chase (Limerick) and more are in the pipeline. There are more than twenty POC's in Northern Ireland, according to the British Orienteering web site, but they have to be bought on site rather than downloaded in the comfort of your own home.
The beauty of these POC's is that you can now download the course and map from the Coillte Outdoors website and just go orienteering - it's ideal for families, anyone wanting a training run, schools and scout groups, for example.
There have been POC's before, but the internet had revolutionised them so that you no longer have to seek out the local shop or forest office to buy a map, and the clubs can keep the maps up to date easily.
Some of the courses have an educational nature walk element built in, to appeal to schools and a wider public.
So some day when there's nothing on, head for the hills and persuade your schoolmates, work colleagues or neighbours to have a go!
Details on the coillteoutdoors.ie site

Junior Training

The final Junior Training session of 2010 took place in the complex moraines of Knockbarron, near Kinnitty, Co. Offaly on 27th November, with squad members from Ulster, Leinster and Munster taking part. Organiser Ruth Lynam drafted in the help of elites Marcus Pinker, Darren Burke, Colm Hill and Ruairi Short to help shadow the juniors and give them the benefits of their own experience. Colm scared them with his training diary (see it on the AttackPoint web site here!) but they all coped well with the technical challenge of the 2-metre contours and the range of exercises ranging from compass work to a line event (following a wiggly line on the map to see if you can find the control)s, finishing with a gut-busting relay. At least it warmed them up a bit! After a night in the (aptly named, considering the weather) Birr outdoor centre the group took in the Connacht Championships at Portumna on the second day.

2011 World Championships reminder

Intention forms and selection policy guidelines are now available for next years World Champs in France.
All seniors who intend to take part in the WOC2011 selection process should complete the intention form and return to Ivan Millar at elite@orienteering.ie before December 31st.
All Irish seniors are urged to take part in the selection process whether they have WOC ambitions or not. Being a part of the process exposes you to high level and exciting competition and can really improve your orienteering in many different ways.
The documents can be downloaded from the new Irish WOC2011 blog here
Ivan Millar (High Performance Director)

New Technology

Marcus Geoghegan writes "There is a little used feature of Ór (the orienteering software package developed by Ajax's Martin Flynn - Ed) called "live results" which automatically sends up-to-date results to the web every two minutes. Anyone with a web browser can see the competitors’ times as they come in, anywhere in the world. If you have a phone with a web browser (most of them do) then you can see the live results at the event.
If you were at Ajax’s recent event in Marlay Park you will have seen a square symbol on the bottom of your splits sheet (example at http://tinyurl.com/3x69fnt). Mobile phones scan these Quick Response (QR) codes and are automatically directed to a website. They are becoming commonplace in outdoor advertising and in magazines as a fast way of directing a phone to a product or event website. There is a QR code reader available for most camera phones; you don’t need a fancy smartphone for this to work.
Putting these two technologies together (Ór live results and QR codes) means that anyone at an Ajax event can use their phone to scan the QR code and instantly see the results as they happen (or you can type in the web address if you don’t have a QR code reader on your phone).

Switching-on online results in Ór is easy and it will automatically tell you the web address for the online results. Of course you will need to have an internet connection on your event laptop, but most events nowadays have mobile phone coverage so you can use a broadband dongle.
Generating the QR code to display at your event is also very easy – try this one: http://qrcode.kaywa.com here.
Yes, even more technology to mess up your nice day out in the woods…

Full steam ahead - October 30th

2010-10-31T00:16:00.006+01:00

After some weeks of introductory events after the summer, the competition season gets into full swing this weekend with Munster and Leinster league races on the dunes of Banna, Co. Kerry (where Sir Roger Casement landed from a German submarine in 1916) and at Brockagh, Co. Wicklow, and a Cork Autumn League event at Rostellan, near Whitegate.

Highlights of November include League events in Leinster on the 7th at Three Rock Wood, near Dundrum, in Munster at Davmore, Co. Waterford and in Ulster at Slievenagore near Newcastle in the Mournes (on Saturday 6th). The same weekend sees the Senior Team travelling to the south of England for the Senior Home International (see more below). November 14th sees a sprint event at Castle Lough Woods, on the shores of Lough Derg, Co. Tipperary, where Bishopstown use the area of a previous Munster Championships.
Schools events feature too, with St Anne's Park in Dublin on the 17th and Farran Forest Park, Co. Cork on the 19th.
Provincial Leagues dominate the weekend of the 20th/21st with Portglenone, Co. Antrim on Saturday 20th, the Vale of Clara, Co. Wicklow, Torc/Muckross in Kerry, Colligan (Co. Waterford) and a County league at Farran, Co. Cork.
The 30th sees Western Eagles staging the Connacht Championships at Portumna, Co. Galway - a flat, forest with good detail and fast running (but plenty of ticks in previous years). Lower-cost entries available until 5th November. See details here.

(Photo: Neil Dobbs (WATO), who features on the JK 2011 entry form)

JK 2011 Preview

The biggest orienteering competition to visit these shores is just around the corner. For years we have been travelling to England, Scotland and Wales at Easter for the Jan Kjellstrom 4-day orienteering festival, the premier British orienteering competition, eatsblished to commemorate the young Swedish orienteer who helped establish the sport in Britain. (Jan was the son of Alvar Kjellstrom, the founder of the Silva compass company). Now it's coming to us: next Easter in Belfast and in Co. Down.
You have no excuse: if you aren't running, you are needed to help (and even if you are running your help will be much appreciated!).
Something like 2000 runners from Britain, Ireland, continental Europe and beyond are expected, and the organisers are laying on a full programme for them.
The festival kicks off with a sprint race on a new map of Stranmillis College and surroundings, in Belfast, on Good Friday; then an individual race in Co. Down on Saturday, followed by another individual race at Slieve Croob - again in Co. Down - on Sunday and a relay on sand dunes at Tyrella, Co.Down on Monday. In addition to these events there will be training opportunities in the days before the JK and in the week between the JK and the Irish Championships in Wicklow.
All the NIOA clubs are involved in the organisation and a large number of volunteers are needed: event co-ordinator Harold White is urging all all Irish O-clubs to help.
Visit the JK2011 web site JK2011.org.uk here for updates. Entries are already open, so get in there!

Entries open
On-line entries have opened for some major events:
JK2011, Easter in Northern Ireland. See JK2011.org.uk here. Cheapest entries up to January 30th.
Irish Championships, May, in Co. Wicklow. Details here.
World Masters O-Championships, Hungary. Details here. Lowest cost entries up to October 31st.

SHI Team
The Irish team to compete at the Senior Home International in Southern England on November 6th and 7th has been selected. Will the Seniors emulate the Juniors and beat Wales, or will the follow the Veterans and be beaten by the Welsh? The team will be:
M21: Darren Burke, Gerard Butler, Seamus O'Boyle, Colm O'Halloran, Marcus Pinker and Ruairi Short.
M20: Niall Ewen, Conor Short, Josh O'Sullivan-Hourihan
W21: Aislinn Austin, Rosalind Hussey, Ruth Lynam, Niamh O'Boyle, Toni O'Donovan and Faye Pinker.
W20: Fiona Hill, Olivia Baxter
The relay event will be held on Saturday in Pamber Forest, while the individual competition will be held as part of the November Classic in New Forest, Southampton. Details here.

Controllers'Course

Belgian event controller Rogier Vanaken came to Ireland and gave an interesting course for Controllers and prospective controllers at the Kilcoran Lodge Hotel near cahir, Co. Tipperary, on October 16th. He has wide experience as a high-level IOF technical advisor and travels to many countries to help run major international competitions.
About a dozen orienteers from clubs in Dublin, Cork, Waterford and Galway attended the lectures and discussions in the hotel and then made their way to Toureen Wood in the Glen of Aherlow for the practical sessions.
Rogier brought the group up to date on new IOF rules, dealing with control placement, electronic timing, organisation and the functions o the controller (ot "technical advisor"). He also covered some of the differing requiremants for sprint, classic and relay planning.
Did you know, for example, that a control should be placed at least 1 metre from the feature, to allow competitors to get in to punch, that the first control in a course should be fairly easy to avoid runners bunching up while they search for it; or that you can put a control in a pit or depression if it is close to a clear attackpoint (otherwise it has to be on the edge or top)?
He said that the main function of the controller/technical advisor is to help the planner to get the best courses for the competitors.
A course like this is a prerequisite for anyone aiming to be an IOA controller.
You can read the IOA Rules on the IOA web site here, and the IOF Rules at www.orienteering.org here. The IOA Rules are currently being updated but the basics remain the same.

Planners' Course

Graham Nilsen from Great Britain (one of the controllers for next year's JK O-festival in Northern Ireland) is giving a course planning course on Saturday December 4th in Dublin. The course will be at Bewley's Hotel at Newlands Cross (between the M50 and the M7/M8 Cork/Limerick road).
Graham has written the book (literally - here is the link) on course planning and the course should be an essential part of every planners' toolkit.
There's a Leinster League event on the Curragh (about 20 minutes from the hotel) the following day.
Details from IOA soon.

October 2010

2010-10-04T22:54:00.026+01:00

Welsh Washout

A numerically under-strength team combined with a disappointing performance saw Wales defeat the Irish Veteran Home International team at the VHI last weekend. The orienteers didn't have the excuse of the weather, unlike the golfers, as its main effect was to delay some runners because of flooded roads.
England took the title, followed by Scotland, while the Irish weren't able to emulate the Juniors, scoring only 82 points tio Wales' 170. The team ran gallantly but it was not to be.

Both events were run on the Gower peninsula, a rural area near Swansea, and both races were run on fantastic areas of sand dunes. The individual event on Saturday was at Whitford Burrows, mostly open runnable dunes with some bits of complex coniferous forest. Running conditions were perfect - mild and dry, and the 1:10000 scale map with 2.5 m contours was excellent.
Fine runs by Marcus Pinker (2nd M35), Ruth Lynam (5th W55) and Steven Linton (3rd M40) , Colm Rothery (3rd M50) and Colm O'Halloran (5th M45) weren't enough to save the day, however, as the Irish team was seriously under strength, missing one M40, two W40's and one W35 from the full complement of 24 runners. In the individual race there are no spare runners - every one counts; in the Relay only the top four teams (out of a possible 6) count for each country. So, after Day 1 the score was England 136, Scotland 139, Wales 98, Ireland 64.
After heavy rain on Saturday night, the approach roads were flooded and the start was delayed. The rain cleared about the time of the relay mass start and, again, conditions were good for running. Broughton Burrows (not to be confused with JK2010's Braunton Burrows), mapped at 1:7500 with 2.5 m contours, was again, runnable sand dunes, but with bigger dunes than Saturday. fences running across the dunes broke the area up into smaller parcels.
Disaster struck the Irish camp, however, when A-team 2nd leg runner Colm Rothery missed a control and the team (Marcus Pinker, Ruth Lynam, Colm and Kathryn Walley) were eliminated. A second Irish team were non-competitive when an injured Wilbert Hollinger couldn't run, even though team manger Raymond Finlay stood in. The remaining three Irish teams finished and picked up 18 points against Wales' 72, a tally made possible by Wales brilliant win (anchored by former Shamrock O-Ringen winner Liz Campbell) by only 2 seconds over England.

Back to the maps, though: an earlier version of the Whiteford map had a feature I've never seen before: the dunes were mapped with 2.5 metre contours but the high, rather featureless hills at each end were mapped with 5 m contours, with a big warning arrow on the map to show the change. A Welsh solution to a Welsh problem?

At the end of the day the result showed that there's no substitute for strength in depth, which the English and Scottish have in full measure. It also shows that a sure way to lose a Home International is to start with the handicap of an incomplete team, which is a pity, and a rather last-minute selection of the team contributed to availability and travel problems.

Anyway, here's to next year in England ...

2010 Veteran Home International (hosted by Swansea Bay Orienteering Club)
VHI Individual - Whiteford Burrows, 2 Oct. 2010
VHI Relay - Broughton Burrows, 3 Oct. 2010
Provisional results (points to be confirmed)
                 Ind. Relay Total
1. England 136 108 244
2. Scotland 129 72   201
3. Wales     98 72    170
4. Ireland    64 18     82

Ireland: M35 Marcus Pinker, Declan McGrellis; M40 Steven Linton, (vacant); M45 Colm O'Halloran, Dave Weston; M50 Colm Rothery, Ronan Cleary; M55 John McCullough, Val Jones; M60 Wilbert Hollinger, Richard McCourt; W35 Violet Linton, (vacant); W40 (Vacant), (vacant); W45 Heather Cairns, Julie Cleary; W50 Kathryn Walley, Nadine Grant; W55 Ruth Lynam, Barbara Foley-Fisher; W60 Teresa Finlay, Aine ní Shúilleabháin.

Full results here.

VHI Trivia: The Junior Home International in 2005 was run on the same two areas and the finishing order was the same; Ruth Lynam may be the only person to attend all three Home Internationals this year: the JHI as Team manager, and the Veteran and Senior events as a team member. (The SHI is in England in November).

Leinster League gets underway.

The first event of the 2010-11 Leinster League series gets underway at Ballymahon, Co. Longford on Sunday October 10th. Setanta have revised the 1983 map of the area, consisting of flat forest (the earlier map also had some fields, parkland and a golf course) and promise the usual range of colour-coded courses from Yellow (short and easy) up to Brown (long and difficult). Details on the Setanta web site here. Read about the area on the Coillte Outdoors site here.
The remaining Leinster League events are at Mall Hill/Brockagh (Laragh, Co. Wicklow) on October 31st, Three Rock Wood (November 7th), Vale of Clara (November 21st), and Curragh East (December 5th). The Spring series will start in February with another event in Longford, run by Fingal.

World Cup in France

Read about the adventures of the Irish squad at the Workld Cup races in France last weekend on the Senior Squad blog here. They've started preparing for next year's World Championships in Aix les Bains and Chambéry in eastern France in August 2011.

Fáilte go WMOC 2011

The World Masters Championships in Hungary next year have taken the unusual step of including an introduction and welcome page on the event website in the language of each national O-Federation. The event is at Pecs (scene of the 1983 World Championships) from June 30 to July 9th. Just click on the Irish flag at the top of the page to get a real céad mile fáilte to the event! Try it here. Bain triall as anseo.
(Family orienteerinhg holiday planners note: JWOC in Poland 1st-9th July; EYOC in the Czech Republic 23rd-26th June).

Controllers Course Reminder

A one-day Controllers course is being held on Saturday 16 October at Kilcoran Lodge, near Cahir, Co. Tipperary on the old Cork road. It is being taken by Rogier Vanaken who took a similar course in 2007. He has competed for Belgium at several World Championship events, and now acts as their senior team Coach. He was appointed as an IOF Event Advisor in 1991 and has acted in that capacity at many IOF events since then.
The course is designed for those who wish to become IOA Certified Event Controllers, and for those who wish to update their controlling skills and knowledge. It will cover all aspects of controlling, and practical exercises will take place in the neighbouring Glengarra Wood. The subsidised cost of the course is €25, that includes the cost of lunch, light breakfast etc. The Lodge is offering an overnight rate of €55 should anyone wish to stay on the Friday or Saturday evenings. CorkO are staging an event in Glengarra Wood on the Sunday.
To book a place, you should send a cheque for €25 to Aine Joyce, Irish Orienteering Association, 2nd Floor, 13 Upper Baggot Street, Dublin 4, or you can e-mail her at osec@orienteering.ie
The course is limited to 20 participants and places will be allocated on a first come first served basis.
Just to give forward notice, a Planning Workshop will be held on Saturday 4 December and details will be issued shortly.
Harold White
Controller of Technical Standards

Ireland Beat Wales in Junior Home International

2010-09-16T00:13:00.027+01:00

JHI 2010 – Scotland

Mike Long (Ajax) writes: I had the pleasure of attending my first Junior Home International over the weekend of 10-12 September, based around Perth and Stirling in Scotland. On paper the Irish team looked strong and so it was proven in practice with a comfortable overall win over Wales to win the Judith Wingham trophy for the first time in many years. Can anybody actually remember when we last won?

The JHI coincided with the Park World Tour urban sprint race in Perth. Our first port of call therefore was Scone Castle on the Friday afternoon where we were able to run over the courses earlier used by the elites in the qualification race for Saturday’s final. A sample from the map is shown below.

Personally I found the dark green detail confusing but it did not seem to bother the Juniors. As Greg pointed out to me “you have to run at the same speed as which you can orienteer”.

There was also a maze-O (south end of map) done by the Juniors without a map! The winner was Alex who got to the centre via the exit. Nobody had spelled out the rules! It was a good start and got everyone’s head on the job at hand.

Unusually the relay was held on Saturday (so that all could go to watch the elites in Perth town centre later). Several of the Juniors were familiar with the map of Kinnoull Hill, as it had been used at the 2009 Scottish 6 day. The map (part of if reproduced below) is characterised by steep runnable woodland with many paths. In fact most of the juniors said they had to ignore the paths, which they found confusing, and focus on the contours.

Overall we did very well. The boys were 8th, 11th and 12th and the girls were 7th, 11th and 13th. At the end of the day England, on 54 points, had a 4 point lead over Scotland. We were on 24 points, 8 ahead of Wales.

Then it was off to Perth where we had the pleasure of watching Irish Champions Niamh O’Boyle and Nick Simonin compete with some of the best elites in the world, literally in Perth town centre, much to the bemusement of the local shoppers. Both placed in the top 10 behind the very impressive Helena Jansson of Sweden and Østein Kvaal Østerbø of Norway.

Then there was the ceilí. I will let someone else tell the story here!

On to Devilla Forest for the long distance individual races on Sunday. Here the forest was pretty flat with much fewer paths and subtle (to me at least!) contour detail, see below. The only issue here was the “white” areas were very rough with waist (except for Colm Moran) high heather and a network of old drains. Keeping a bearing was very difficult. The M18’s had a very long leg through the middle of the map and several of the lads chose to run the path to the east (some 3 km) which turned out to be as quick.

Again the performances were very good our best runner in each class were Caoimhe (7th), Niamh (7th), Áine (6th), Jonathan (4th), Jack (6th) and Séan (5th): strong across the board.

We ended up on 61 points well ahead of Wales 45. England, on 135 points, also had a very comfortable 16 point margin over Scotland. Full detailed results can be found here.

My overall view of the results was that although we had no individual medal winner we performed strongly with strength in depth in most of the classes and we were certainly not hovering around the bottom.

My three personal running highlights of the weekend were:
Clíona Mc Cullough first back in the relay despite leaving both her shoes in a marsh in the forest!
The sight of the four M16’s finishing the relay more or less together
Jonathan Quinn’s excellent 4th place in the M14 long distance, 13 seconds off a medal (The picture below shows Jonathon with the winning team trophy. Jonathan was also named the best Irish performer).

The entire Irish crew are shown below:

Cillín Corbett, Niamh Corbett, Laura Cox, Megan Getliff, Donal Kearns., Seán Knight, Róisín Long, Áine McCann, Clíona McCullough, Peter Meehan, Jack Millar, Colm Moran, Caoimhe O'Boyle, Cathal OCléirigh, Laurence Quinn, Jonathan Quinn, Deirdre Ryan, Conor Short, Alex Simonin, Andrea Stefkova, Jill Stephens, Mark Stephens.
(Sports Council regulations evidently prohibit under 18's being identified by name in photos, so the team is listed alphabetically - Ed).

The other competition of the weekend was on the various roads between Edinburgh, Perth and Stirling. The drivers Ruth, Kathryn and I were forced into various, often strange, route choices by our intrepid navigators. Laurence and Colm can fill in the details!

It was the last JHI for Colm, Conor, Laura and Séan. They will be clearly missed but a first for Cathal, Donal, Peter, Róisín and Megan. One would have to conclude all is well in Irish Junior Orienteering. It was also clear to me that none of the above would have happened without the dedication and hard work over the past number of years by Ruth and Greg. Roll on 2011!
There are more reports on the event on the Irish Junior Squad page here and on the Northern Ireland OA site here. For runners routes on Routegadget in the individual race, see here. For more photos, see here.

The mystery M16 with the Judith Wingham Trophy

(JHI 2011 is due to be in Ireland and the usual date is in September - Ed)

The Irish Orienteer

January 2012/1

December 2011/1

November News

Autumn 2011 Orienteering

October 2011 News

Home International Time

What the Dickens?

September 2011 News

Running Shorts

Sumer is Icumen In

A Look back at IOC2011

Follow That!

Irish perform well at home JK

April 2011

Sudden Oak Death affects Larch

March News

Spring News

The Twelve Days of O

There's a great opportunity for orienteering between Easter and the May Bank Holiday weekend, with twelve events in twelve days, or even more if you take in the String course and o-maze at three days of the JK!

New Year 2011

Joss Lynam 1924-2011

Event Postponements

Snow shoes? - O-shoes!

Full steam ahead - October 30th

October 2010

Ireland Beat Wales in Junior Home International