Spring is Sprung ...

Night, Night, Night-O
The night orienteering season is over for another year. A busy schedule of "Dublin by Night" events taking in old and new areas, and easy and difficult ones, ran from early December to mid-February, providing a fuller fixtures list than the normal day-orienteering one in Leinster. A cancellation of the Kerry Orienteers event in Killarney took one night-O out of the equation. The Northern Ireland Night Championships was on last weekend and soon the clocks will go forward, depriving us of those precious hours of darkness beloved of night orienteers.
I enjoy night orienteering: keeping track of where you are is more difficult and more important than in the daytime as mistakes are easier to make and more costly to correct at night. Some other orienteers obviously agree, but not too many: the turnout for most of the DBN events was in the 40's. Is night-O too specialised? Too challenging?  Too difficult to get to? At the wrong time of year?
The numbers attending orienteering events can be very disappointing: Fingal's Spring Cup event last Sunday at Rossmore, Co. Monaghan, attracted only 60 runners. An obvious difficulty here is that there is no nucleus of orienteers in the area to bring the numbers up, but it must be demotivating for clubs, particularly for the mappers, planners, organisers and controllers who make the events happen, if their efforts go unrewarded.
It's not about money (or not just about money): we all like to feel appreciated, but we'd all like the clubs and the sport to be financially viable. Bigger numbers at events mean more money for the clubs and for the sport. With that money the clubs can pay for mapping, they can subsidise juniors to go abroad to events and to training, they can invest in the sport. Without that income we are on a downslope, with falling participation, fewer people seeing the need to join clubs to ensure the future of the sport and an increasingly older age profile in the clubs.
Are there too many clubs? Do we need to bring the orienteering to the people and not the people to the orienteering? Is it time to reinvent the sport, taking it away from the woolly-hat in the forest image to make it an exciting sprint in a park?
Look at mountain running: the recent race on Three Rock attracted about 300 runners. Look at the Park Runs which regularly attract hundreds of runners. Look at the mountain-bike races on some of our orienteering areas, attracting good numbers at many times the cost of an orienteering entry.
Buy a mountain bike and the same day you're experiencing the thrills and adrenalin of charging downhill through fantastic forests and trails in natural surroundings. Take up orienteering and experience what, exactly? The frustration of getting lost? The slow learning of map features, compass work and pacing? People nowadays want instant gratification and that's not something which orienteering in its present form can provide. Maybe it's not something we should aim to provide, but without capturing and retaining new people, we're going to be in trouble.
Now, where was I? Night-O: if we are to make it attractive to the day-O people, we need to make it  less intimidating: perhaps a mix of parks and urban areas, university campuses and easy forests, graduating to more difficult areas of forest of sand dunes, but a progression. We exclude under 16's for insurance reasons; to a large extent we exclude people who don't have a decent headlight (though the price has fallen and the quality has risen dramatically in the past few years); we exclude people who rely on public transport. We need to be an inclusive sport, not an exclusive one.

Springtime
Anyway, as spring has sprung, we have the various spring series of competitions in full swing, as well as the great Campus Sprint events which raise money for the Juniors. After a confusing start this year, the sprints at Waterford IT, DCU and UCC are culminating in the TCD and NUU (Coleraine) events on March 1st and 16th.

The LegenDerry weekend of March 15-16-17 has a great range of competitions, from the walled city of Derry, to St Columb's Park in that city, a middle distance race at Binevenagh near Limavady, a sprint at NUU Coleraine and an ultrasprint back in St Columb's Park again. Details and entries are here.

The Rock of Dunamase

Looking further ahead, the Leinster Championships on April 6th are being staged by CNOC at Dysert, close to the Rock of Dunamase in Co. Laois (definitely worth a visit: read about Dunamase here and see details of the event here.). Entries close on March 26th. See the map from the previous (April 2012) event here.
Just two weeks later, the Jan Kjellstrom O-Festival is in south Wales at Easter. Details of the sprint at Swansea University and the other events in the Brecon Beacons are here.

Another two weeks (May 2-5) and we'll have the Irish Championships in Co. Wicklow, with the Sprint Championships at the university campus in Maynooth, Co. Kildare. Details are here. Cheaper entry fees apply until 31st March.

Poetry warning: Stop here if you don't want a blast of whimsical poetry which has nothing whatsoever to do with orienteering ...

Spring

NOTHING is so beautiful as spring—
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.
What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden.—Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

(Gerard Manley Hopkins)

(At least it's a nice change from Winter, when Dick the Shepherd blows his nail and milk comes frozen home in pail, and so on!).

Another year ...

A belated "Happy New Year" to all our readers. There's lots of exciting orienteering in prospect for 2014, with new areas both at home and abroad; night-O, Sprint-O, a World Championships, and accessible multi-day events in Wales and the English Lake District. The Juniors have some interesting plans too, with the prospect of training in Norway for next year's Junior World Championships as well as a trip to the JK at Easter in Wales and maybe to the Lakes 5-Day in August.

A brief look back ...
One of the series of events this year is the Campus Sprint races to raise money for the Junior Teams. Two events have already been held, at Waterford Institute of Technology in October and at Dublin City University in December.

The DCU event offered entrants a choice of a map in English or Irish, and planner Kieran Rocks used a seasonal Christmas tree as a control site, while one of the other sites, a statue, looked like something from Easter Island! (The juxtaposition of these festivals reminds me of the quiz question "When did Good Friday fall on Easter Monday?" - the answer is at the bottom of the page.) Further events in this rather scattered series are rumoured to be in UCC on February 15th with further events in TCD on 1st March and others at unspecified future dates...

... and forward
As usual at this time of year, TIO reviews some of the interesting events both at home and away, for the coming twelve months. Ireland, Portugal, Italy, Finland, Sweden, the UK and Brazil all feature. Even if you can't go to any of these events, you can get lots of fun from looking at the websites!

Spain and Portugal are attractive destinations in the early part of the year, and this year sees multi-day events in Andalucia (February 14-16) with a World Ranking Event (WRE) at Punta Umbria, near Huelva, with training during the following week - not far from Faro airport (see here) , and the Mediterranean O-Championships in Portugal on 21st-23rd February, again with WRE's, 160 km east of Porto, with a middle, sprint and long distance race (and some Irish already travelling) - see here. Who cares if it's not really on the Mediterranean if the entry fee is only about €20 for three days? The same weekend, there's an interesting concept at the Kvarner Bay Challenge on Cres Island in Croatia, where the entry fee is whatever you decide it's worth - see here. Moving north, the Swedes come out of hibernation on February 28th with the Pan-Spring at Kristianstad with night, middle and long races close to where the 2014 O-Ringen will be - see here for entry details.
Early March has the Portugal O-Meet at Gouveia, in the middle of the country, from March 1-4. This has two middle and two long races, a night sprint, and trail-O, plus training opportunities. A week later you could run on the karst limestone terrain of Slovenia at the Lipica Open. If you're taking off for St Patrick's weekend you could go to the Mediterranean Open Champs in Tuscany on March 13-15. The event has a sprint, a middle, and a sprint in Florence. There's also a pre-World Championships training camp near Venice from March 9-13. If you want to stay at home that weekend, there's a sprint race in the walled city of Derry on the 15th, with a middle distance race the next day in the same general area adding up to 5 races in three days. There are also hints of a long-O type event in the Galtee Mountains on March 15th/16th where Bishopstown Orienteers are celebrating their 25th birthday (details here), where there's also a CorkO Munster League event in the same area. Back in Scandinavia, the Danish Spring event, marking the end of winter, is on March 22-23 in North Zealand, north of Copenhagen, with sprint, middle and long races but no relay.
Moving into April, CNOC's Leinster Championships at Dysert, near the Rock of Dunamase in Co. Laois, is on the 6th. Further afield, there's a World Cup race at Murcia in southern Spain on April 4-6, followed by the European Championships at Palmela, just outside Lisbon, in Portugal from 9th-16th, that's roughly the week before Easter. Between then and Easter, the Riga O-Week in Latvia takes place (15-21st) in the 2014 European City of Culture, and the Spanish Championships in Andalucia (17-21st) where the Malaga orienteering club are also celebrating 25 years. At Easter, the Jan Kjellstrom O-Festival is in south Wales while there are also multi-day events in Prague (18-20), Sardinia (18-21) and Bulgaria (18-21).

The Irish Championships in Kildare and Wicklow kick off the month of May: a sprint on a new map of Maynooth, and middle, long and relay races near the Wicklow Gap. The same weekend, the big overnight relay "Tio Mila" is on in Sweden. 2014 is a big year for orienteering in Italy: at the end of May, there's orienteering in Trentino, in the mountains north of Venice, the "3 days of Trenches", to commemorate the area where there was fighting in the First World War 100 years ago. This is followed by the regular "Highlands Open" WRE on June 1st.

Apart from Western Eagles Three-Day in Co. Galway on May 31-June 2 and the British Championships near Newcastle on 31st/1st, , there's also a 3-day in Belgium at St Hubert (June 7-9th) and the 11th European Rogaining Championships in Estonia (7-8th). Moving towards the main orienteering holiday season, the 66th Jukola 7-person overnight relay in central Finland is on June 14-15, with the Venla women's relay in the afternoon of the 14th: thoroughly recommended. This is followed immediately by the Tallinn O-week in Estonia. For anyone searching for something a bit more exotic, there's a 3-day in Iceland on June 27-29 and there are also a competition in Greenland (July 2-5). (A new airline called Wow Air flies from Gatwick to Iceland). Back in Sweden, at Salen (location of the 2008 O-Ringen where the Irish Juniors went on tour) there are 3 days competition on June 27-29, and three evening races in Stockholm on June 30-July 2, allowing you to be a tourist in the daytime and an orienteer in the evening.

Peak multi-day event time starts in July with the Sorlandsgaloppen (July 3-6) in southern Norway, but a big attraction will be the World Championships in Asiago in  northern Italy (July 5-13) with the associated Italian 5-Day open to everyone and including a sprint race in Venice. Clashing with this is the Fin-5 five day in (you guessed it!) Finland, at Kuusamo, from 6th-10th. Rather more out of the way is the Romanian "Transylvanian Open" at Cluj (July 10-13) leading towards the Junior World Championships at Borovets in Bulgaria from July 21-17. (Cluj is the venue for the 2015 European Youth O-Champs - the 2014 EYOC is in Macedonia on June 25-28). A longer event is the Kapaonik Open in Serbia (July 10-20). In Switzerland the Swiss O-week returns to the spectacular setting of Zermatt at the foot of the Matterhorn from July 19-26 and overlaps with the 50th Swedish 5-Day O-Ringen in Skane from July 20-16. The world's biggest orienteering event promises lots of seaside forests in sunny southern Sweden - the O-Ringen is a must at some stage in your orienteering career!
Croatia, Slovenia, Norway and Slovakia also have multi-day events in July, and the World University Championships are at Olomuoc in the Czech Republic, location of WOC 2008, from August 11-17.

In August the closest multi-day event to us this year is the Lakes 5 Day in the English Lake District (August 4-8), promising varied terrain and lots of international competitors, but lake district traffic and accommodation are issues you may also have to contend with. In August, Slovenia hosts the OO Cup (1-5th) on what looks like spectacular Alpine terrain, and there's a 5-day in Spain, 240 km north of Madrid on August 5-10 and a 5-Day at Uslar in Germany (4th-9th). The World Rogaining Championships are in South Dakota, USA, on August 16-17: "Rogaining" is long distance orienteering where you visit as many controls as you can, like a score event, but over a 24 hour period. Back in Hungary, the Hungaria Cup runs from 16th-20th near Budapest, then Greenland beckons again (August 23-25). For army orienteers, the CISM Military World Championships are in Austria from 24th August.

By September the big multi-day and holiday events are over,but there's still plenty of good orienteering on, notably a series of four city races in London, Barcelona, Edinburgh and Porto. The London race, on Sunday September 21st, has an urban race in Guildford the day before; the Porto race in Portugal on October 3-5 has a night event, relay, score and city races. Edinburgh (11-12 October) features city races at Edinburgh and Stirling Castles, and Barcelona (1-2 November) with a sprint in Nou Barris Park and an urban race around the Old Town, complete the City Race Euro Tour.

Meanwhile, back in Italy, Croatia and Montenegro there's 10 days of orienteering from Sept 29 to October 10: what a way to end the summer! Moving on, how about the 11th Istanbul 5-Days (October 29-November 2) which sometimes features a night race in the Grand Bazaar. For the more ambitious, the World Masters O-Championships (for over 35's) are in Brazil has sprint, middle and long races from November 1-8.

At the end of the year, you have a choice of the warm or the cold ... the Sylvester 5-Day in Belgium (December 26-30) or five events in the Canaries (Dec 27-Jan 4 2015).  Then, to look forward to in 2015 we have the World Championships coming to Scotland in August with the Scottish 6-Day, hopefully a Shamrock O-Ringen in West Cork in June, and the Swedish O-Ringen and the World Masters back to back in SW Sweden.

Fore more details of these events,and of many more, visit the World of O web site. Thanks to CompassSport Magazine, the IOA web site www.orienteering.org and World of O for the information I have extracted and presented here.

Finally, here's an interesting street map for you: do you recognise it? Look closely to read the street names.

During the Cold War, apparently the Russians mapped cities and towns all over Europe and Dublin was no exception. This 1970 map shows (obsolete) tramlines and the uncrossable river Liffey and the text is in Cyrillic script, incidentally named after Saint Cyril. See more here.

Good Friday question: Reportedly a horse called "Good Friday" fell in a race on Easter Monday in 1946.

That's all for now.

December 2013/1

Sprint for the Juniors

The second of the Campus Sprint events in support of the Junior Squad is on Saturday December 7th at Albert College and DCU in Glasnevin, Dublin. Kieran Rocks has planned two courses of about 2.2 and 2.9 km (straight line distances) starting and finishing in the park but mostly on the Dublin City University campus. Start times from 11 to 1 pm at Hampstead Avenue off Ballymun Road.
There will also be sprint events in Cork, Belfast and Limerick, with the proceeds going to the irish Junior Team. See more details here. You can register online here, or just turn up on the day.
Come and sprint for the Juniors!
(You can read about some Junior activity here, where Robert Pim, Zach O'Sullivan-Hourihan and Caoimhe O'Boyle went training with the top British juniors in the Lake District recently).

Night-O starts

The weekend of December 7th/8th is a busy one for orienteering, with the first of the Dublin by Night events on Saturday at Carrickgolligan, between Kilternan and Shankill, Co. Dublin. Two courses,start times from 6 to 7 pm. See details from the organisers, GEN, here.

For night-O fans, there will be more night events at Phoenix Park (January 4th), Glendoo (January 11th), Massy's Estate (January 18th), Tolka Valley Park (January 25th), Rockbrook Park School (February 1st) and a CNOC event on February 8th. Kerry Orienteers are also running one at Knockreer, Killarney, on February 15th.

Looking forward, the  Northern Ireland Night Champs are on February 22nd at Loughrey Campus, Cookstown, Co. Tyrone.

There has been some discussion on the IOA Forum about night events: how technical should they be? Would people travel further for more technical challenge or would they prefer easier to get to events that maybe aren't as challenging? What would you like?

So, say goodbye to Saturday Nights!
As an aside, the night event planned by Allan Bogle for 5th December at Loughermore had to be cancelled because of the storms and the exposed terrain.

SouthEast short course & POC at KK

Also on the weekend of 7th/8th December, Waterford Orienteers are launching their new map of Kilkenny Castle with a South east Short Course League event on Sunday 8th.

 

Leinster revives

A groundswell of support for the revival of the dormant Leinster Orienteering Council has resulted in a planned meeting on December 12th after the presentation of the Autumn Series league prizes at BaseCamp in Middle Abbey Street in Dublin. See details on the new IOA Forum here.

Priorities are fixtures co-ordination and more cooperation between the clubs to promote the sport by running series of local events.

Jon Musgrave comes to Hillsborough

Jon Musgrave- one of the UK's top coaches and silver medal winner from WOC 1993 - is coming to Hillsborough on 14-15th Dec to hold a coaching workshop. The weekend is designed to be beneficial to both athletes and coaches.
The Saturday session is aimed at juniors/ beginners and those that are interested in coaching at that level. The Sunday session is for older more regular orienteers and those that would like to coach at that level.
Basically if you orienteer- or would like to start orienteering- then this is the perfect weekend for you!!

NIOA Coaching Officer Allan Bogle needs to know if you are interested in coming. See more details here.

 

O-bits
See the short promotional video for orienteering (and particularly for the Swiss brothers Martin and Daniel Hubmann) "Go hard or go home"  here. The "Route to Christmas" feature is back for another year at World of O. See Day 1 here. Orienteering in south Wales at Easter? Entries to the 2014 Jan Kjellstrom O-Festival in the Brecon Beacons at Easter have opened. See details here. The JK is Britain's biggest competitions, with sprint, two day's individual and a relay over the Easter weekend.

Finally, the sad news that Nuala Rothery, wife of Seán and mother of former Irish Champions Eoin and Colm, died recently after a short illness. Seán, one of the founders of Irish Orienteers and of the IOA, and designer of the original IOA logo, is still orienteering in the M85 class whenever it is provided (well done, Frank Ryan for having the class at the Connacht Championships). Both Eoin and Colm are now based in Australia but are still active in orienteering, Eoin having embraced MTBO as well as the running variety, and is a regular reader of TIO and was a frequent contributor in earlier times, as can be seen from the TIO archives here. Our sympathy goes to Seán, Eoin, Colm and Fionnuala and their families.

November 2013

Championships Time
While the Irish Championships come at the effective end of the competition season, at the beginning of May, the Northern Ireland, Connacht and Munster Championships cluster in the autumn. This year the Connacht Championships were brought forward to the end of September only to be moved back to the end of October again following a clash with the Senior Home International, and the Munster Champs were run a week later.

It's unusual these days to get to run in a forest on two successive Sundays, with so many events taking place on open mountain, but both Championships provided good orienteering in good forests. The Connacht Championships, run by Galway's Western Eagles club at Newcastle Demesne near Ballymahon in Co. Longford, offered an interesting mix of coniferous and beautiful runnable beech wood, with an elegant setting in front of Newcastle House, the seat of the King-Harman family since the 1700's, on the banks of the river Inny. Heavy rain early in the day tested the waterproof maps to the limit, while Frank Ryan's courses used the best parts of the wood, though anyone taking the longer road routes got to know one or two sections of road intimately. 3ROC's Colm Moran took the M21Elite course while CNOC's Niamh O'Boyle won the W21 Elite. The event was run largely for the benefit of visiting orienteers as the small number of Connacht runners were mainly involved in helping: there was, however, one Connacht prizewinner in Derek Conerney, 2nd in M40L. Once again, hats off to the small group of orienteers in Connacht who ran the event: in all honesty I have to say it was much better than I had expected! You can see the results, routes and split times here.

The following Sunday, Cork Orienteers ran the Munster Championships in a classic Galtees forest at Toureen Wood near Cahir. Galtees forests tend to have large erosion gullies running down the sides of the mountains and forests roads running parallel to one another across the slope, and Toureen Wood is no exception. Starting high and finishing low may have reduced the climb on the courses but it didn't eliminate it altogether. The turnout was better than for Connacht, with a good representation of Munster and Leinster runners and a handful from Connacht and Ulster, not to mention a couple of Swedish visitors. Cork O's Darren Burke retained the Munster title, his fifth, while his clubmate W18 Niamh Corbett continued to make her mark and took the W21 title. Yet another good day's orienteering in quite detailed forests where, again, the planners (Liam O'Brian and Willie Fitzgerald) made the best use of the area. You can see the results, routes and split times here.

Wherefore Art Thou?
For those unfortunates who weren't able to make the Munster Championships, there was some consolation in the Three Days of Rome the same weekend.  About 20 orienteers from Ireland made the trip, and you can read Niamh O'Boyle's account of the races here:

With the World Championships to be held in Venice in 2014, meaning an embargo over parts of the city, the Italians took the opportunity to offer a 3-day event in Rome instead. It attracted 18 orienteers from Ireland out of a total of 974 from 17 countries. Our group of myself, Kieran Rocks, Susan Lambe, Marcus Pinker and Ger Butler had a great apartment just down the street from the Colosseum. 

 Day 1 was held in a fairly straightforward park, made much more interesting and fun by running the event as a mass start night-O! Villa Borghese is one of the most popular parks in Rome just north of the city centre. Fast and furious, you had to run fast or get left behind. Wilbert Hollinger kept his cool to finish first by 5 seconds in M65. Mary O'Connell of 3ROC took 2nd place in W50 and Aoife McCavana of GEN was 3rd in W18. My map with route from the women's elite course is here.

Day 2 in Villa Ada was a totally different proposition - green and hilly with lots of route choice (through the green or around on paths?). It was hard to follow the little paths in places and many people lost time wandering around, including me on no. 10. Wilbert was 1st again, Mary was 2nd again, and Marcus Pinker took 3rd place in M35. Again, my course/route is here.

Day 3: the main event. This was the one that we had been waiting for; a chance to run around ancient Rome, past the Colosseum, on the same streets that the Emperors once ruled over. The race didn't disappoint and required forward planning and nifty footwork to avoid tourists and garbage trucks in the narrow streets. There was also a challenging crossing of a major road - the option being to throw yourself in front of the cars and hope they stopped on time to save time or politely wait until they had passed. Marcus was the only one in the top 3 today, with a fine 2nd place in M35. Most of the W21 course is here (no A3 scanner - hence no. 1 is missing).

The Irish put up a good show overall with Marcus sneaking up to 2nd on M35, 19 sec ahead of 3rd after 112 mins of running! Wilbert took 1st place on M65 despite dropping time on the third day, and IOA chairperson Mary was consistent enough to finish 2nd. I'm not sure if they will run this event again or if it will revert to Venice, but it's definitely a nice choice for a weekend of orienteering in November (25 degrees and sunny :)

Calling all Controllers
IOA is running a one-day Controllers' Course in Kildare on 16th November, given by the doyen of UK controllers, Graham Nilsson. Graham has given controlling and planning courses here before and they are excellent. However, it is limited to 15 people and by the time most of you see this it will probably be over ... (but look for a dramatic improvement in course and event standards?)

O-Bits ... EYOC Photos taken by Gerry Meehan at October's European Youth O-Championships in Portugal are here ... IOA are running a two-day First Aid course in Newbridge on 30th November/1st December. At present there are only 2 places left. Details here ... There is to be a sprint event at Dublin City University on Saturday 7th December to raise money for the Junior Squad. There were four great sprint events last year for the same purpose, so here's a chance to do some sprint-O training in preparation for the Irish Sprint Championships at Maynooth at the beginning of May ... JK2014: entries are now open for Britain's biggest O-event, at Easter (April 18-21) in South Wales. See here ... Sad news: the death occurred on November 5th of Nuala Rothery, wife of Seán Rothery, one of the founders of Irish orienteering, and mother of former Irish Champions Eoin and Colm.

October 2013

VHI 2013
To round off the reports on this year's Home International series, here is Team Manager Helen Baxter's account of the Veterans' event where, to everyone's surprise, Wales finished in second place behind England, relegating Scotland to third and Ireland to fourth.

 

Team Manager Helen Baxter

After something of a scramble to put together a full team the Irish Veterans set off for Norfolk on the first weekend of October. It all started very well when the NI contingent went to pick up their two Skoda Octavias and found they had been allocated a couple of Mercedes Benz B class. It was a little worrying that they were white and even more worrying that they were Mercs given the usual mucky parking fields at orienteering events, however they were very comfortable. As it turned out there was no need to worry, the parking was on hard standing and a nice dry field.

Things started to go downhill a little when we reached the YHA in Sheringham to be met with an unapologetic ‘There’s no hot water all weekend’. I’m sure it was an unfortunate coincidence that the English team hadn’t managed to book in time and were accommodated in a different hostel (with hot water). That and the fact that the bar wasn’t open and they were intending to lock up at 11 with half the team (plus some Scots and Welsh) still en route almost sent me into meltdown. Instructions to use the keypad on the door weren’t complete either so when they were passed by phone to Andrew at 12.15 am it didn’t work. Fortunately Philip had waited up, helping Mary with a bottle of red, so was able to let them in.

Next day, fortified by breakfast, but not necessarily showered, the team had the morning to explore Sheringham as the Relays didn’t start until the afternoon. I waited with bated breath for Kathryn to turn up as rumour had it her passport had expired – she managed to persuade Ryanair to let her aboard much to my relief. The Relay area was in three distinct parts; a sloping contoured area and a flat area with lots of small paths separated by a wooded holiday park with multiple rides and roads. Running was fast and furious with England dominating the event. The main surprise was when Wales pushed Scotland into third place. Despite some good runs we were bringing up the rear by the end of the day and 18 points down on Scotland. Organising club NOR had arranged for us to use shower blocks on the campsites so at least we had access to warm water.

The four teams managed to drink the hostel dry of red wine that evening – obviously we were all in training for the Individuals the next day. The Individual day dawned sunny and warm: Sheringham Park was a great area with some well planned courses – the bracken added to the challenge but Marcus, Toni, Mary, Jean and Colm produced fantastic runs. Despite our best efforts the deficit was too much to make up so we held on to fourth place, but congratulations to Wales who held onto their second place leaving Scotland in an unaccustomed third. Photos are here. Full results are here. Relay map and routes here; individual here.

It was a great weekend and the long term plan of lulling the other nations into a false sense of security is going well! Next year it’s the Forest of Dean near Bristol on 13/14 September, so start the fitness training now!

Helen Baxter

Team Manager

The team that travelled was: M35 Marcus Pinker; M40 Declan McGrellis, Bobby Smyth; M45 Angus Tyner, Billy Reed; M50 Colm O'Halloran, Aonghus OCléirigh; M55 Andrew Cox, Philip Baxter; M60 Colin Henderson, Raymond Finlay; M65 Wilbert Hollinger.

W35 Toni O'Donovan; W40 Jeni Pim; W45 Heather Cairns, Julie Cleary; W50 Mary O'Connell, Kathryn Walley; W55 Bernie O'Boyle, Helen Baxter; W60 Jean O'Neill, Teresa Finlay; W65 Sue Pim.

Northern Ireland Championships: Meelmore and Luke's Mountain

M21E winner Colm Moran

About 180 ran in this year's Northern Ireland Championships on the rocky slopes of the Mourne Mountains on October 12th, with top spots on the two Elite courses going to visitors Colm Moran (3ROC) and Niamh O'Boyle (CNOC).

The map, updated for the World Police and Fire Games in August, covered the south-facing slopes of the Mournes and, though not basking in sunshine, the conditions were fine for running, with a cool breeze and good visibility. The underfoot conditions were good, with little heather and reasonably dry, and  Harold White's courses brought the runners on the longer courses first west and then back east along the slopes by the old quarries, with a long leg across the hillside. The shorter courses did a clockwise loop with the juniors following the few old mining or sheep tracks available. The Meelmore café provided parking and also refreshments for the most patient orienteers in the world.

You can see the results here and the courses and runners' routes on Routegadget here. Bizarrely, there seem to be two LVO websites without clear communication between them, so you may not end up quite where you expected ... a bit like orienteering, really!

Harking back to the last TIO, a look at the numbers in various age classes is interesting. If we take both M21 classes together (M21 Elite and Long) there were 18 entered for this 14-year age spread. If we look at the next three age classes (M35, 40 and 45) - admittedly 15 years - there were 16; for M40-45-50 there were 34, and for M45-50-55 there were 36, with similar proportions in the Women's classes: where are all the 21? Are they all off doing adventure races or mountain biking, sports where you can get an immediate return for your investment in terms of adrenaline rush and instant gratification?

Schools' Orienteering
There is a lot happening around the country in schools' orienteering. There are primary and secondary schools competitions in Munster, in Cork, in Leinster and in Northern Ireland. The Irish Schools' Championships are being hosted by GEN in Co. Wicklow in April. A short video promoting orienteering in schools has been released by IOA - you can see it here.

For your diary, here are the forthcoming schools' fixtures from the IOA fixtures list:

Leinster (Primary)
13 November - Cabinteely Park
12 February - Santry Demesne
30 April - Irish Primary Schools Championships (GEN)

Leinster (Secondary) 
23 October - Santry Demesne
4 December - Cabinteely Park
29 January - Malahide Castle
12 March - Leinster Schools Champs (Secondary) - Djouce Woods, Enniskerry
8 April - Irish Secondary Schools Championships (GEN)

South East
12 February - South East Schools' Championships - JFK Forest Park, New Ross (Primary)
13 February - South East Schools' Championships - JFK Forest Park (Secondary)

Cork
22 October - Farran Forest Park
22 November - Doneraile
28 January - Curragh Wood, Midleton (Secondary)
29 January - Curragh Wood (Primary)

Munster
13 March - Munster Schools' Champs (Primary & Secondary), Fota, Co. Cork.

Northern Ireland Schools Association
EVENT 1- 26th SEPT: Lakeland Forum, Enniskillen
EVENT 2- 16th OCT: Stormont
EVENT 3- 28th FEB: Garvagh
EVENT 4- 17th APR: Castlewellan
EVENT 5- 16th MAY:  Portglenone
EVENT 6- 18th JUNE: Drum Manor

We also have an extraordinary situation in Munster where an alternative schools' orienteering organisation, also calling itself the Cork Schools Orienteering Association, which is not affiliated to IOA, is staging more than thirty schools events  throughout Munster, some on the same day as the officially sanctioned events ...

From the archives
30 years ago ... in September 1983 Eoin Rothery was urging us to enter the 1984 Irish Championships at Killary, the first complex open mountain area which was mapped in Ireland (before that we had thought of orienteering as being only in forests) ... Joss Lynam entered into correspondence with The Irish Orienteer about his course length at the 1983 Irish Championships on Keeper Hill ... IOA Fixtures Secretary Bernard Phelan was trying to get the clubs to commit to major events farther in advance ... Four schools (Wesley, de la Salle, Oatlands and Muckross Park) ran schools events in Leinster and LSOA Chairman Brian Duffy lamented the lack of development in schools orienteering ... DUO were about to unveil their map of Glencree at the 2-Day in November ... entry fees were £6 for seniors and entries closed six weeks before the event in those pre-internet days ... The Irish Orienteer Trophy inter-club competition was about to kick off another round, with Thomond v Lee Orienteers v Western Eagles; Ajax v 3ROC; Eastern Command v GEN; NWOC v Setanta ... the ripples of the "Moving Crag" controversy at Curragh's event at Stradbally in May were still being felt, with an Ajax Limerick competition including the following verse:

"There was a Young man called Wally

who went hunting crags in Stradbally

though he looked up and around

that crag couldn't be found

it had gone for the day to Offaly" ... 

Both Aonghus O'Cléirigh and Wally Young were anxious to improve the selection process for WOC teams ... there was a report on the 1983 World Championships in Hungary where only Wally Young and Eileen Loughman made it through to the final ... Norway finished 1-2-3-4 in the men's race. This was the first time that qualification races were used to select runners for the finals. The Irish relay teams finished 18th and 15th ... National Orienteering Day was on September 25th ... John McCullough gave yet another report on the 1983 Swedish O-Ringen in Smaland where Aonghus ÓCléirigh won the H21A class on Day 5 ... the World Military Championships was to be in Brazil in November ... the IOA organised a course planning competition ... the first seven teams at the Tio Mila overnight relay in Sweden finish within 48 seconds of one another after 13 hours of racing. Finland's Kalevan Rasti win ... the inclusion of Ski Orienteering as a demonstration sport at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Canada is threatened by Curling ... IOA Juniors Officer Larry Roe was encouraging schools to make O-maps of their grounds ... IOA were running a development conference in October in Kilkenny... Plassey Orienteers (PLO) ran a relay event at Foynes, Co. Limerick ... and ECO ran an event on their new map of Fauna, near Donard in Co. Wicklow, which another club had been mapping under a different name, little suspecting that two maps were being made at the same time until the two groups of surveyors met in the forest. "What are you doing here?" "Making a map. I might ask you the same question ...".

35 years ago ... In Autumn 1978 Curragh Orienteerers were about to launch their new 4-colour map of the Curragh (printed on yellow paper to save ink) ... John McCullough reported on his first trip to the Swedish O-Ringen ... the second edition of John Disley's book "Orienteering" had been published (Cost £3.25) ... Wally Young and Eileen Loughman were heading the Leinster Ranking List ... Brian Porteus was about to run a planning and organising course at Newcastle Youth Hostel in Co. Down (Cost approx. £3). Brian is now the President of the International Orienteering Federation. The Irish Junior Championships were run in Donadea, Co. Kildare on 14th/15th October (I was sent by the planner to put out controls in the dark with sites marked by streamers made from pieces of black plastic rubbish bags - the only was to find them was by touch!). The two-day Leinster O-Ringen was in Clarabeg and Donadea. Schools events were run on Sundays and there were 9 planned for the season in Leinster.

You can read the full story in the Irish Orienteer and Leinster Orienteering Clubs' Newsletter archives here.

And finally ...
The venue of next Sunday's CNOC Leinster Autumn Series event (October 20th) is at the Curragh, Co. Kildare - the location isn't shown in the IOA fixtures list.
Some reminders: don't forget to enter the Connacht Championships on October 27th and the Munster Championships on November 3rd.
Good luck to the Irish team travelling to the European Youth Orienteering Championships in Portugal on october 24-27: hope you don't miss too much school!
And thanks to the people who replied to my recent request for confirmation that somebody out there is actually reading this!

JMcC

HI Time

An interesting idea!

September and October are Home International Time, with the Juniors in South Wales in mid-September, the Seniors in Cooley last weekend and the Veterans this weekend in Norfolk. There is always a close tussle between England and Scotland for first and second and between Ireland and Wales for third and fourth. The countries with arguably the best orienteering (Scotland) and the biggest numbers (England) win out. Ireland and Wales often struggle to field a full team, borrowing runners from older and younger classes to make up the numbers. This was not a bad solution last weekend, though, when W35 Toni O'Donovan ran in as winner in the W21 race at the SHI in the mists of Carlingford. We have occasional flashes of brilliance but we don't have the strength in depth.
It's a numbers game, though: with such a small number of orienteers here it's difficult to make up a team. There are plenty of people orienteering, in parks, school grounds and forests, but how do we translate that participation to active membership?
The people who come along casually to do some orienteering don't make the maps or run the events. The core of active orienteers is getting older and is not being replaced by new blood at the rate that's required. The M21 and W21 classes, a 14-year age span, should be full of competitors, but if you look at many big international competitions, it's the veterans who form the biggest group, so it's not just an Irish problem.
What incentives are there for someone to join a club? A nice social atmosphere? Good facilities? Regular technical and physical training? Coaching to help improve? A clubhouse on the edge of a fantastic forest? Trasnport to events? Lots of free gear? Reduced entry fees for events? A spirit of adventure and of community? Any of the above?

Anyway, back to the HI's. Mike Long's report on the Junior event follows. The Junior team is preparing for the European Youth Championships later this month in Portugal; the remaining Juniors will have a great weekend's orienteering in Co. Waterford in two weeks, so there's lots of activity, but the numbers are small and the bigger the base the higher the pyramid.

SHI Relays, Carnawaddy

SHI 2013
The rotation of the three Home Internationals meant that it was Ireland's turn to host the Seniors. Some negotiation between Northern Ireland Orienteering and IOA ended up in two areas in Co. Louth, Carnawaddy and Carlingford Mountain, being chosen for the event and Fingal and 3ROC volunteered to provide the orienteering.
The relays at Carnawaddy on the Saturday ran the teams straight out onto the open mountain and on to the interesting part of the map, with its crags and contours. Val Jones's courses ran across the hillside, giving the spectators and waiting runners a fine view of the race. Luckily the visibility was good even if conditions were cool and windy, but the under-strength Welsh side sufferd two injuries which put them out of contention, with one English injury also interfering with the teams' plans. Good runs by the Irish on their home turf brought the score after Day 1 to: England 26, Scotland 22, Ireland 16, Wales 10.
Overnighting in the medieval village of Carlingford, the teams didn't have to travel far for Sunday's individual race.  Carlingford Mountain has played host to the SHI before (in 1997?) and one Welsh runner had run in that as a W16. Its presence dominated the village, particularly with its permanent cap of cloud which was to play such a part in the proceedings on Sunday. The first couple and the last couple of controls were below the cloud, but the rest of Ger Butler's courses kept the runners in very limited visibility and challenged their natigation, fitness and nerve to the limit on the upper part of the mountain. Great wins from Toni O'Donovan and Jack Millar inspired the Irish team but still the final result was Scotland 48, England 46, Ireland 31, Wales 15.
You can see the relay results and routes here, with the results and routes for the individual and the associated Leinster Autumn Series event which followed the early-startuing SHI here. Read the Scottish perspective on how they routed the Sassanachs here.

Championships time
Following the rescheduling of the Connacht Championships so as not to clash with the Senior Home International, we have a concentration of regional championships coming up soon. The Northern Ireland Championships on October 12th at Meelmore and Luke's Mountain in the Mournes; the Connacht Championships at Ballymahon, Co. Longford on the 27th and the Munster Championships at Toureen Wood, Cahir, Co. Tipperary on November 3rd.
Another attractive event is the Welsh Championships in the sandy forest of Newborough in Anglesey on October 13th but the ferry prices are outrageous and the ferry times aren't great either, so that idea got the chop. Quite a number (eighteen?) of Irish orienteers are going to the three days in Rome at the beginning of November, but Italian law requires that all competitors have a medical certificate stating that they are fit and well, and a certificate from their club to say that they are members. Whatever happened to adventure sports?

 
Simone Niggli Retires
Multiple World Champion Simone Niggli-Luder (Switzerland), holder of 23 World Championship Gold Medals from 2001 to 2013, is quitting elite orienteering after the 2013 World Cup series. In 2003 and 2005 she won all four gold medals (Sprint, Middle, Classic and Relay) at the World Championships!
Read more here.



Junior Home International 2013

The 2013 Junior Home International took place in South Wales on the weekend of 14-15 September. Ireland was represented by a full team of 24 at W/M 14, 16, 18 age groups. We had 4 debutants: Ciara Fitzgerald, Dara O'Cléirigh, Cian May and Zac O'Sullivan Hourihan.

The individual day was held at Mynydd Llangatwg, an area immediately adjacent to one of the JK competition days for next Easter. From my vantage point (OK it is easy for me to say!) it looked like clean, runnable but technically tricky open mountain terrain. I am told that the runnability reduced on the higher ground and that the ferns were poorly mapped making route choice difficult.

The relays on Day 2 were held at Clydach Terrace just off the famous (well to us Civil Engineers anyway!) Head of the Valleys Road. In this area the ground has been much altered by spoil heaps from mine workings etc. so was very tricky technically. The planner choose an excellent change over area on a hill overlooking most of the area.

In the end the Judith Wingham trophy (Ireland v Wales) came down to the performance of the last Welsh girls on their last relay team and we were beaten narrowly by 3 points. If I am honest I guess we did not deserve to beat Wales as they had 3 podium places on Day One and our best results were 5^th, 7^th and 8^th (all girls). The juniors were excellent ambassadors for Ireland, behaved well (I missed the céilí so not sure how that went) and were definitely the best supporters.

My thanks to Ruth for her technical leadership during the weekend and to Rosemarie, Jeni, Brian, Steve, Gerry and Nigel for driving and lots more. Congrats to Cliona, Niamh, Niall and Harry, who are moving on upwards from the M/W18 ranks for their efforts over the years. Róisín was awarded the trophy as best Irish athlete of the weekend for her 5^th individual place and a strong run on leg 3 of the relay.

Full results can be found here. 

An excellent set of pictures, taken by Gerry Meehan, can be found here.

Mike Long

6th London City Race - Clean around the bend

This was my third London City Race, on September 22nd, and it moved downriver from the historic centre to the Victorian docklands on the Isle of Dogs: Eastenders fans will recognise the area from the TV series opening credits. Somewhere recently I read that is was a marshy area in the past and called the Isle of Ducks. 

Getting off the train, we were up high, overlooking the start at West India Dock. Courses were less tricky than in my previous two London races, but the location was unusual, with big basins, lifting bridges, industrial areas, modern skyscrapers and warrens of houses, combined with Mudchute Park featuring a city farm and a reconstructed WWII anti-aircraft battery as a control site. Two of our controls were down by the river itself, on a gravelly tidal beach, so we got the full whiff of the Thames.

The competition area was in the large U-bend in the river, just across from Greenwich. The younger juniors ran in Mudchute Park, just across the road from the event centre, but the rest of us took a train to the start: we had a Docklands Light Railway ticket printed on our race numbers - that's joined-up thinking!
The map was at 1:5000 scale and was about A3 size, with the competition area split into two: the northern part on one side of the page and the southern on the back.  The mapper was Italian Remo Madella who also surveyed the sprint map for JK2011 in Belfast, around Stranmillis College.

It's a very enjoyable race and certainly gives visitors a new perspective on one of the world's great cities.

You can see the map, courses and results here.

Next year the race (on 21st September) will revert to the heart of the city and will be tied in with three other city races to make a series: Porto in Portugal, Edinburgh and Barcelona. Ryanair, here we come!

Another city race to watch next year, though, is the Venice race during the World Championships in Italy.

The City Race was preceded on the Saturday by an Ultrasprint run by LOK in Victoria Park in North London. The 1:1250 scale map showed every tree and bush of quite s small section of the park, and included a special orienteering maze with 2 to 4 controls in it. Runners did three short courses of about 1 km with about 25 controls each. These times were added to find the fastest four in each category (Juniors, Vets etc) who then had a head to head race, after which the rest of us ran a final course to finish 5th, 6th etc.

Typical control site

We had no control descriptions or control codes to check that we were at the right control (there were more than 60 controls out) and if you punched the wrong control you weren't disqualified but got a 30 second time penalty, so it paid to be careful (a lesson I learned the hard way, twice!). The precise location of the control was shown by a small dot in the circle and, in the example on the right, there could well be another control on the opposite side of the tree.

A lot of work for the organisers in terms of computer programming, mapping, control placement and maze construction, but a lot of fun for the 300 or so participants. At least this time I realised that there was an enlarged version of the maze down in the corner of the map, not like the previous time I did one of these.

You can see a video of the event here and  here. Results, maps and courses are here.

Verdict: packed a lot into a great weekend - orienteering, sightseeing, visiting, getting parking tickets ...

On the level ... In my own City Race, I lost 1 minute on the first control by getting the levels wrong and running past a set of stairs in a building without seeing them, and I never recovered the lost time. I ran around the corner and instead of seeing the control, the road disappeared into the bowels of the earth. Later, a small gap in a wall on the map lured me to it, only to find that it was a printing defect in the map and I was again on the wrong level!

Come in, do you read me?

Since the revision of the IOA web site, it's a bit more difficult to see The Irish Orienteer on the page. If you are reading this, and you would like it to continue, do drop a line by e-mail to theirishorienteer@gmail.com to encourage the editor to keep going! Thanks to Mike Long and the people who have done reports for TIO ... how about some more from people? John McC.