3ROC News 7th December 2016

3ROC 40th Anniversary celebration this weekend

3ROC are marking the 40th Anniversary of the club this weekend, with some old-style orienteering at Ticknock at 11.30 on Sunday, followed by a club function at the Dropping Well, Milltown. All members and friends are invited to join us in the forest for a casual run around. There will be no roadsigns and this is not an IOA registered event, just a few friends going for a walk, jog or run, friends who happen to have a map and may just happen to find a few orange and white flags dispersed around the forest …

Well done to 3ROC/DUO member Eoin McCullough on winning the Brown course at the Curragh last Sunday and winning the Irish Student Championships, although the team from the Military College in the Curragh seem to have taken the team prize. There were about 180 at the event, which was good by Leinster League standards. Planner Colm Hill evidently used every hill and contour on the Curragh to inject some climb into the courses!

Last Saturday, UCDO’s sprint event at Belfield attracted a reasonable crowd, and the 3 km course ventured into some previously unmapped areas of the campus out around the old Philips factory in Clonskeagh – a welcome addition to the area. The run was a lot of fun – Belfield is a great spot for sprints like this. M21 Kevin O’Boyle and M75 Paget McCormack were the winners of the long and short courses, respectively.

Belfield, ca. 1974

… and, speaking of 40th anniversaries and old-style orienteering, have a look here at the first O-map of Belfield, drawn around 1974 in glorious black and white by Martin Mulligan (now a professor of Biochemistry at St John’s University in Newfoundland). (When you zoom in it looks a bit fuzzy, but you get the idea – a lot more fields and woods and fewer buildings!).

If you’d like to do some urban orienteering there’s an event at Trinity College on 5th February and three races in Armagh on 17-18-19 February..

Remember our next event (in fact the next event in Leinster) is the Christmas Score Event at Three Rock on St Stephen’s Day, start 10.30 to 12.00, 60 minutes to visit as many controls as you can. See you there!

(PS Happy Anniversary to GEN and SET who were also formed in 1976 from the original “Irish Orienteers” club; Ajax came a year later.)