Julie Cleary wants your help for stroke victims

While many of you will know Julie Cleary as an Irish international orienteer, many of you may not know that just days after the 2006 Irish Championships at Carlingford, Julie suffered a brain haemorrhage and stroke.
Julie has been orienteering since she was a junior with Tipperary Orienteers, the club founded by her father, Frank Martindale. She was an Irish Junior Champion and went on to represent Ireland at World Championships and World Cups on several occasions, as well as being Secretary of IOA, and an IOF event advisor.
She is now looking for sponsorship for "Different Strokes", a charity which helps young stroke survivors in Britain and Ireland: she wants orienteers to sponsor her for each km she runs in orienteering races during May- June, up to a maximum of 50 km.
Julie logged some more runs at the Irish Champs at Bere Island, and you can get more details of her plans and how to sponsor her on-line here.

LVO runners excel at World Schools Champs

World Schools Orienteering Championships
Medals went to Sweden, Latvia, Poland, England, Scotland, Estonia, and Austria in Wednesday's long distance event at the ISF World Schools Orienteering Championships in Scotland.

But while Aine McCann, running with the Irish Schools Team, chalked up her second major win of the week over the rough going at Devilla Forest, she failed to take a medal. Ireland didn’t enter a team in the school section so while Aine was allowed to run in the select section she was not allowed to medal, so England's second place Charlotte Watson took the title.

Last Saturday, Aine, already the British Schools Champion, won the British Long Distance title at Forres. Now she has proved herself a talent to be watched in the future with her World Schools win at Kincardine. With a time of 30m50s she beat Charlotte Watson into second by 2m 2s while Ilsze Buza of Latvia finished third in 33m 20s. "I didn't expect to win," said the Lagan Valley club girl who is coached by her father Greg, "I didn't worry about it too much. Just went out and ran."

Brighton’s Jonny Crickmore, 2nd overall at M16 at the JK, but 8th at the British after a problem at the 15th control, gave England junior World Schools gold. The South Downs runner won the junior select title with a time of 30m59s for the 4.8km course, beating Austria's Tobias Habenicht into second by over a minute.

Finlay Langan became Scotland's first ever medal winner at the championships when he took junior bronze in the Schools section. The Mar club runner finished two and a half minutes down on the lead with his time of 32m26s. And now, with skateboard enthusiast Joab Matthews 4th and rugby player Sam Burgess 14th, Scotland is in the running for the team title when the short distance results are added after Friday's race.

"Finlay's an orienteer but the others are only occasional competitors," said the school squad parent official Fiona Wickes. "But they have all been training really hard with the Mar club coaches."

Latvia and Poland currently head the opposition in the team event.

RESULTS- Orienteering - ISF World Schools Championship Orienteering Long Distance - (Devilla Forest, Kincardine)

Select/Individual Section Senior Girls - 5.6km

1 J Olsson (Swe) 40:35, 2 L Martinsson (Swe) 45:19, 3 J Blomquist (Eng) 46:28

Junior Girls - 4.0km

1 A McCann (Ire) 30:50 (non-counter), 2 C Watson (Eng) 32:52, 3 I Buza (Latvia) 33:20

Senior Boys 6.5km

1 A Ridefeldt (Swe) 37:37, 2 K Kivikas (Est) 38:25, 3 K Jones (Eng) 38:28

Junior Boys - 4.8km

J Crickmore (Eng) 30:59, 2 T Habenicht (Aut) 32:08, 3 J Sars (Lat) 33:23

Schools Section Senior Girls - 5.5km

1 A Segersen (Sweden) 39m37s, B Gustavsson (Swe) 45:05, 3 V Ernstson (Swe) 45:34

Junior Girls- 4.0km

1 L Valdame (Latvia) 32:27, 2 L Pacher (Austria) 36:21, 3 G Jeskowiak (Pol) 41:41; 10 Clíona Galwey (Ire) 48.48; 29 Cornelia Galwey (Ire) 63.54; 55 Mary Deane (Ire) 87.02; 60 Claire Nagle (Ire) 99.30; 85 Ann Linehan (Ire) 115.13

Senior Boys - 6.3km

1 E Heinaro (Finland) 37:52, 2 R Kivleniens (Latvia) 38:31, 3 O Mikkola (Fin) 38:49

Junior Boys- 4.6km

1 P Piosik (Pol) 29:57, 2 I Klavins ( Lat) 30:11, 3 F Langan (Scot) 32:26; 8 Mark Stephens (Ire) 41.19; 22 Jack Millar (Ire) 62.10

Further results can be found here

World Schools Orienteering Championships-Friday results-Middle Distance Running for Scotland, the Aboyne Academy junior boys' squad won team silver at the ISF World Schools Championship Orienteering at Barr Wood near Stirling today (Friday).And there was a second individual bronze for Finlay Langlan, their first counter home in the middle distance event, while Joab Matthews and Sam Burgess finished 12th and 14th.

Latvia with a total time of 2h 40m 15s for their best three counters in Tuesday’s long and Thursday's middle distance events won team gold. Scotland won silver with 2h 44m 32s. And Poland who had gone into the second day of competition just 8 seconds behind the Scots finished third with 2h 46m06s. It was a first ever team medal for the Scots at the ISF Orienteering Championships. Langlan, who clocked 14m29s, claimed individual bronze, seven seconds behind Latvia's Ivars Klavins (14:09) and Portugal's Luis Silva (14:22).

Ireland's Clíona Galwey finished 7th in the D2 class, improving further on her 10th in the Long Distance race on Wednesday. A non-competitive Aine McCann finished 2nd in the 2.1 km D2 Select class with a time of 12.55.

Other Irish results: H2 Schools class 2.5 km Jack Millar 17.47; Mark Stephens 17.55 (both non competitive).

D2 Schools class 2.0 km: 7 Clíona Galwey 15.46, 34 Claire Nagle 21.30, 40 Ann Linehan 24.16, 50 Mary Deane 29.08, 57 Cornelia Galwey 33.10.

(Information from Bill Melville)

Leinster Championships 2008

It was certainly a fair mountain we had to climb from the start of Setanta Orienteers Leinster Championships at the Wicklow Gap. Fair Mountain was the location for the event, on a new Pat Healy map based on Stirling Surveys photogrammetry. In fact, everything was fair except the weather, though it could have been much worse. All hail the Leinster Champions and all hail described the weather at times too.
An exposed upland area to the west of Turlough Hill pumped storage power station, the bleak start and finish area gave no shelter to the runners, though conditions on the courses were not bad. Lots of rock faced the longer courses with a first leg leading diagonally upslope from the start, throwing the runners in the navigational deep end right from the off. This area was really the only part of any complexity and brought many to grief within sight of the start.
After this the courses stayed mostly on the boggy, gullied mountainside with the longest veering towards Conavalla: the area was more runnable and less heathery than neighbouring Glendasan where Setanta ran the Leinsters in 2004. (Have SET run more Leinster Championships than other clubs? Mullaghmeen and Djouce also spring to mind).

David Healy (GEN) had 2 minutes to spare over CNOC's Colm Hill in M21L with CNOC clubmate Seamus O'Boyle another minute down. Niamh O'Boyle (CNOC) took the W21L title just 41 seconds clear of QUBOC's Ciara Largey, with CorkO's Ailbe Creedon third.

The area is a good addition to Wicklow's maps but must be a difficult one to have planned easy courses on. Nearly all open mountain with some patches of young forest, areas like Fair Mountain are challenging and intimidating to orienteers who expect a gentle stroll in the forest with the kids, but it does show that it is a serious sport requiring stamina, fitness, strength and speed as well as map reading skills.

Fair Mountain and Sunday April13th's race at Carlingford Mountain, provided excellent open-mountain preparation for the Irish Championships at Bere Island on the May bank holiday weekend.

Leinster Championships results here
Courses and Route here on Routegadget

Leinster Spring Cup Final
Carlingford, the following Sunday, proved very challenging as usual. Trina Cleary's courses often use small, subtle control sites in areas with lots of larger features, so it wasn't going to be easy. There was serious climb on the longer courses which used the mountain to the full but visibility was good and underfoot conditions excellent so the fitter runners moved away from the pack. Start and finish were in the area used for the Irish Relays in 2006 and the shorter courses stayed on that side of the hill.
David Healy, Declan McGrellis and Seamus O'Boyle took top spots on the Brown courses with Colm Hill dropped to 5th following a problem en route to the first control. Colm Rothery continued his return to form in advance of the Irish Championships, finishing 4th. This was the final event of the Leinster Spring Cup. League results are here.
Carlingford routes are here (very interesting!)

In the Spring Cup (best 4 of 6 races) Gerard Butler (3ROC) held off the challenge of David Healy to win the series by a mere 3 points, Butler with a race in hand dropped his Carlingford result while Healy had only run four races. Another close finish was on the Orange course with CNOC's Caoimhe O'Boyle holding off Donal Kearns (Fingal) to win by 8 points.

Royal County Runs
Fingal are running three events (the Tara Sprint series) to promote orienteering in Meath. Starting on April 19th at Dalgan Park, between Dunshaughlin and Navan, the events continue at Tara (May 10th) and Balrath Wood (off Dublin to Slane road) on May 25th. While aimed mainly at beginners, current orienteers are welcome too.

Peak Season

Irish Winners at JK2008; Switzerland's Daniel Hubmann cleans up

Three first places and a winning Relay team were the highest placed Irish competitors at the Jan Kjellstrom O-Festival in England over Easter.

Amid snow, gales and mud, 3000 competitors from many countries took part in this four day festival which started with a sprint race at the University of Surrey at Guildford. The two day individual event followed at Leith Hill (scene of JK71, 77 and 99) and Ashdown Forest (of Winnie the Pooh fame), and a relay at Eridge Old Park.
These are some of the best areas in southeast England for such events: certainly Leith Hill is beautiful runnable forest with a variety of detail. Ashdown is more straightforward with tussock, marshy open areas and easier navigation but more physical, while Eridge Park was good for a relay but very muddy at this time of year.

The sprint race was on a sloping university campus with many buildings, courses of less than 3 km and winning times of 15 minutes or so with lots of controls: something we could easily emulate here. Best Irish performances were Laurence Quinn (GEN), 4th M14 and Maritta Kymalainen (SET) 4th W45. Daniel Hubmann won the Elite race by 11 seconds (2.7 km in 14.01) and Sarah Rollins won the W21 race by 6 seconds (2.4 km in 15.58).

The 2-day individual event started at Leith Hill, near Guildford. High winds and wintry showers meant a run on the gloves and hats at the orienteering shops, but once you were running the conditions were reasonable most of the time. The area had plenty of paths and plenty of runnable forest, with areas of pits and detailed contour features. The elite courses had a short race today, with the classic distance at Ashdown to follow on Sunday.

Ashdown Forest was close to the army camp where 600 competitors stayed, including many of the Irish. Again, conditions were tough, with wind and heavy showers. Several valleys cutting into the area made for more climb than on the first day but the navigation was easier.

Best Irish results in the individual (combined days 2 & 3) were Ivan Millar (LVO) 1st M35S, James Logue (NWOC) 1st M40L, Noel Bogle (NWOC) 1st M70S, Angus Fyffe (FERMO) 2nd M14b, Julie Cleary (3ROC) 2nd W40S, Jack Millar (LVO) 2nd M10A. There was hot competition in other classes too, with Colm Rothery (AJAX) 6th in M45L running against Colm O'Halloran and Aonghus O'Cléirigh, for example.

The Elite classes were won by Daniel Hubmann (Switzerland) and Elise Egseth (Norway).

The Relays (for the JK Trophy) at Eridge Park were in a deerpark: runnable open surrounded by mixed forests with a high fence to separate the two. The weather again played its part: heavy snow showers to numb the waiting runners and cover the tracks in the forest. Very muddy underfoot with marshes and streams, but detailed enough and with some route choice, not a bad area. One of the Irish Junior Squad teams (Alex Simonin, Alan Lane and Padraig Mulry) won the Open Ad Hoc class by almost 4 minutes, with other Irish teams mostly based on the Junior Squad in 4th, 5th and 6th position. some of the last leg runners couldn't start because of travel arrangements.

Kristiansand OK (Norway) - featuring Daniel Hubmann again - won the JK Trophy, with a second Kristiansand club team 2nd and Edinburgh University 3rd. The Women's race was won by Elite Norwegian club Wing OK (with Elise Egseth), South Yorkshire 2nd and SHUOC 3rd.

JK 2009 will be in Northumbria: a sprint race in the centre of Newcastle upon Tyne; individual events are Kyloe and Detchant (as in JK 85) and a relay at Dipton. At least Easter is later next year ... and maybe next year there will be less confusion about what the various days are called. The Sprint race was called "Day 1", the first individual "Day 2" and the second individual "Day 3".

See full JK results here. See JK maps and routes here.

An Irish Junior Squad tour led took in the JK before a party headed for a few days training in Sweden and the 3-day Spring Cup at Hillerod in Denmark: the first major competition in Scandinavia after the snow melts. See details of the Spring Cup here. The event consists of a night event, classic and relay.
Update: Two Irish teams got top-10 places in the Relay. Colm Hill, Aine McCann and Alan Lane finished 4th and Rúairí Short, Conor Short and Kevin O'Boyle 6th.
Read more about the Spring Cup on the Ultimate Orienteering web site here.

Peak Season at home
We're coming to the time of the Irish Championships: entry closes on March 31st so be sure you have entered. Before that we have the Leinster Championships at Fair Mountain in Wicklow. Setanta Orienteers are organising the competition and you can see details here.
Don't forget the Irish 3-Day on Inishbofin on the June Bank Holiday weekend.




Any Old Maps?
Trinity College Map Library is trying to build up an archive of orienteering maps, showing the development of the sport and the changes which have occurred in orienteering areas through the years. Did you know, for example, that the first Irish 2-colour map was of Ballynahinch, Co. Galway, in 1970?
Brian Hollinshead is coordinating the collection of maps. If you can even loan Brian a map he can scan it and give you back the original: better still if you can donate a clean copy to the library.
See what maps are still missing here.

New arrival
UK-based Irish international Toni O'Donovan (CorkO) had a baby daughter in March.

March O-Bits

Rothery takes win at Bull Island for Ajax, Quinns make it a double for GEN

Colm Rothery led in the field on the 9 km Brown course 37 seconds ahead of John Casey making it an Ajax double at last Sunday’s Leinster spring series event at Dublin's Bull Island.

Off the back of a hard cross country race the day before (in which he beat Setanta rival Gerry Brady), he was well pleased given that it was his first outing on the map. Reckoning the time could have been pushed into the low 50s, his approach of navigating off larger features and isolated vegetation lost him time when the intricate contour detail of Aonghus O'Cléirigh's map was the way to go.

A rise in form may see him mount a challenge at the upcoming Leinster Championships at Fair Mountain on April 6th (Details here) but he will face stiff competition from some of the younger contingent absent on Sunday.
The Quinns, Laurence (M14) and Jonathan (M12) made it a double for GEN (Great Eastern Navigators) with Laurence taking first place on Light Green, Jonathan first on Orange. Both won against large strong fields.

Una May (3ROC) showed her experience and put two minutes between herself and Maritta Kymalainen (Setanta) at the top of the Green course.

James Millar, M10, LVO (Lagan Valley) was the winner for the Millar clan taking a clean win on the Yellow course.

Denis Reidy (Organiser), Donal Wickham (Controller) and Aonghus O'Cléirigh (Planner/Mapper) of the organising club Ajax produced a faultless, high quality event which must rank as a leading League event if not championship standard.

Two maps were used, the original Bull Island map and a new northern section, as technical as the first and deemed by some more so because of fewer large features.

See Results See Routes

Peter Kernan

News wanted!
Pieces published here don't have to be big: if you have any reports on events, any news of interest to orienteers, any plans, suggestions or proposals, stories or histories, please e-mail them to the editor for consideration for TIO.

The O-Bits column in The Irish Orienteer has always been a miscellany of orienteering news from around the country and around the world and I'd like to keep it that way.

One concern, which I have raised before, is that those of you who have access to and are comfortable with the internet can get all the information, results, entry forms, Routegadget action replays etc, very easily. There are many others who don't have access to this, or who prefer to have a printed page in front of them.

In 50 years time, will anyone bother to search the electronic archives for information on Irish orienteering in the early days? Will future technologies allow us to search things as primitive as PC's or the internet? Nowadays we can still read printed information published hundreds of years ago: the printed word is more powerful and more permanent than characters on a computer screen.

Having said that, it is far easier to type something on here and have it available around the world almost instantly, than to grapple with layout, desktop publishing, printing, enveloping and posting a printed version.

In a reversal of this process I hope to publish archive material here, once I can bring myself to venture into the cobwebby attic to search.

JMcC

Junior Issues

Colm Hill reveals some of the behind-the-scenes activity at a recent Sprint-O event run by the Leinster Junior Squad

Up before the sunrise.....

Controls and SI boxes in the bomber vests. First thing you notice is that it’s cold, very cold. Then you notice that annoying drizzle that wets everywhere and everything, it being January and all that. Then comes that moment when you realise you actually volunteered for this of your own free will. That's what orienteering does to you.
The second Irish Junior Squad Sprint-O event was in UCD, Belfield. The course was planned by Colm Hill and controlled by Niamh O’Boyle, with her mother, Bernie, as acting controller on the day. Niamh was horrified at the first draft for the long course with the distance around the 6 km mark and 40 controls. Realising we didn't have that many SI boxes and the fact that it’s a so-called sprint series, the course was modified to make it a more humane course ....slightly.... the long course ended up at 3.9 km with 28 controls, and the short 1.6 km with 13 controls.
On the day, Ruairí Short, Bernie, Fiach, Colm and Kevin (somehow I got all the far controls) could be seen running around with chains and padlocks, securing the SI units to any immovable object. As the Juniors were putting out controls, Conor Short had the SI system up and running with Don marshalling everyone including Colm before he had a stress breakdown (planning is more difficult that it sounds). The event was ready to get cracking by 10:00 am. As the runners went out, the conditions got worse. The sheets of rain could be seen sweeping across the car park, including that special wind that never makes up its mind on what direction it wants to blow in.
One of the first runners through the car park was Darren Burke. He looked tired. A big grin could be seen on Colm’s face- the course was making the good orienteers suffer. More orienteers could be seen running in circles over by the engineering building as controls were scattered everywhere. As confused orienteers ran left and right, the results looked as if Darren's time of 26:52 would win it, but to the dismay of Darren, Ger Butler could be seen flying across the car park. He caught the last 2 controls and finished in a fast time of 23:11.
On the short course, Jonathan Quinn had it all his own way coming home in 15:29 with Laura Kelly almost a further 3 minutes back.

The main discussion point of the course was leg 19 with the uncrossable fence. When putting out controls a gate was discovered. This we quickly blocked as best we could. Some orienteers fell into the trap only for someone to knock down the gate- it’s obvious who fell into the trap on splits browser. Dave Masterson put it best after the event, " Sure I've been in UCD half my life, I intended to go that way and if it was locked I would have climb the fence, its only 7ft with no barbed wire". (He was quietly informed of the sprint-O “no crossing uncrossable fences” rule). For those that didn't check their control descriptions around the steps, you can thank UCDO for the control site from the night-O a few weeks back.

As the day came to a close the control collecting duties were given out and everyone ran in different directions. As is normal, once you get given your controls, you run as fast as you can so not to get another five added to your list. With one slight problem: Colm forgot to hand out the keys!! (O, and what’s that? I'm gone to the furthest control, in the rain) This affected everyone with the exception of Marcus, who returned with the control and chain in one hand, a smile on his face and...a lock cutters in the other.
The final junior spring series event is at Killiney Hill, Co. Dublin, on Sunday March 2nd.
A wet, tired and cold junior – Colm Hill

Junior News
Last weekend’s Irish Junior Squad training weekend in West Cork attracted more than twenty aspiring team members to the squiggly contours, man-eating marshes and craggy open mountainside which characterize the area. Cork O’s Darren Burke and Ailbhe Creedon and IOA Juniors Officer Ruth Lynam concocted a menu rich in variety, with two sessions on Saturday at the adjacent Carrigalougha and Derragh maps. Both these areas are open mountainside and have been used for the Shamrock O-Ringen.

The juniors, aging from M/W14 to M/W18, showed no fear, coping with the contours and the cold with aplomb.
The sessions included a line event (a line on the map with unmarked controls: follow the line to find the controls), control pair exercises and a range of circular courses which could be tailored to the needs and ability of each individual. The afternoon finished with a tricky course running back to the cars, followed by a game of marsh football (a west Cork specialty pioneered by Bernard Creedon and CorkO some years ago). For the record, the match was a draw but nobody is too sure of the score.
Saturday night had talks on course planning by Brian Corbett and Darren Burke and Ruth Lynam outlined the plans for the Junior Squad in 2008.
A Munster League event at nearby Tir na Spidoige on Sunday finished off the weekend (and nearly finished off some of the juniors too, if the snores in the car on the way home were anything to go by!). Darren’s courses were challenging and made the trip well worthwhile.

You can see the courses and routes on Routegadget here.

JMcC.

Junior Plans 2008
The next Junior Squad weekend is in Leinster on March 8/9. The sessions wil include time trials in the Furry Glen at the Phoenix Park and relay training in a forest near Castledermot in Co. Kildare. On Sunday the juniors will take in Fingal's event at Castletown House, Celbridge.

Junior tours this year include the JK in the south of England at Easter, the Danish Spring Cup in March, the Swedish 5-Day in July and the French 6 Jours d'Aveyron in August. Representative events include the Junior World Championships near Gothenburg in Sweden at the end of June, the European Junior Championships in Belgium at the end of August, the Junior Home International near Liverpool in late September and the European Youth O-Champs in Switzerland in October.
For more details visit the Irish Junior Squad web site.

Black Night by Slade

Marcus Geoghegan is nothing if not a perfectionist, so when 60 minutes had elapsed with no sign of the front runner, Ger Butler, on the 4 km Long course, doubts started to creep in.

"Have I overdone it..some of it is tricky..there's some rough bits..." he starts muttering.

Standing under an umbrella by the car with a light implanted in his head it was dark and wet. His concern wasn't helped by the headlamp walking by the car reading a map ... this isn't a normal route choice "...WHERE did you get this manky piece of forest..." spits the headlamp and grumbles off.

It's a strange sight: 20 or so cars thrown up on the side of the road by the forest, it's dark, wet and misty... no street lights ... frightening for townies like us. Apparently a local had pulled up and roared at the sight of the cars ..."What's going on here lads?". Probably expecting some normal pursuit like badger baiting, he turned on his heels quickly when invited to take part in a spot of night orienteering.

The young Shorts, Ruarí and Conor, clatter up in their spikes to the car, grab control descriptions and go. Tall and light, they're seasoned O-soldiers at this stage, a couple of kilometres on a wet night in February is nothing to them, a mere skirmish.

Finally a finisher... Ger Butler comes in. Shakes his head at the time and the missed controls, the one on the hide lost him time... it's a story that will be repeated. Marcus's mood improves immensely - going from zero to one finisher is a big step.
After that finishers start rolling in. Despite the numerous tracks and relatively open forest, the mist makes picking up controls in the forest tricky. Stories abound of the one that got away.

Ruarí Short wins Long in front of Philip Brennan with Mary O'Connell snatching third ahead of Martin Flynn and Conor Short. Andrew O'Mullane leads in a small field on the short ahead of a brace of Redmonds and Patrick O'Brien. Old names on young shoulders.

Finally I'm sent of on my allotted task with Gavan and Tony, control collecting, the pinnacle of orienteering tasks. My choice of an LED bike light as I was going out the door proves unwise ... at 10:20 pm I can't find the last control. Mobile phone calls in Marcus to sweep up the one in the hide.
Back on the road everyone is gone ... as though it never happened.

It's a strange one, night orienteering. You can't get it on Playstation or by pressing the red button. You have to go out in the black dark. There's one left in the Dublin series ... worth a try.

Peter Kernan

(Peter was at the AJAX night event at Slade, near Saggart, Co. Dublin, last Tuesday night. The final Dublin By Night event for the season is Phoenix Park on Saturday February 16th. Courses of about 9 and 5 km ..., starting between the US Embassy and the Ordnance Survey. Turn left 500 m NW of the Phoenix Monument, 6.30-7.30 pm. Adults only!).

But wasn't Black Night by Deep Purple, not Slade?