Orienteering News April 26th 2017
What a great day we had for the League event at Carrick Mountain last Sunday: the weather was perfect for orienteering, dry and mild; the forest was at its best – before the bracken grows up – and the orienteers enjoyed the courses. An ankle injury sustained at the Leinster Championships didn’t stop CNOC’s Colm Hill winning the 8.4 km Brown course, with his cousin Kevin O’Boyle a scant 30 seconds behind.
This wasn’t the closest finish of the day, however: the 3ROC duo of Amalia Naughton and Una Coghlan had only 23 seconds between them on the 4.9 km Red course. Thanks to organiser Lindie Naughton, Controller Brendan McGrath and Planner John McCullough for a great day’s orienteering. You can see the results and routes here. There’s a problem with some of the runners’ routes on Routegadget for some reason: the route on the map is fine but the animated re-run of the course isn’t working for everyone. In addition, control 186 (only on four courses) didn’t register everyone so we took it out of the results altogether.
One innovation was the non-competitive “Training map” we had, with 25 controls where you could select which ones you wanted to visit if you needed to brush up on your navigation or fitness without having to run a particular course.
Carrick Mountain summit, at 381 metres, visited by the Blue & Brown courses on Sunday.
There’s a lovely piece on the event on Cindy Doyle’s blog gowild.ie here.
If you didn’t get enough of Carrick, there’s a mountain race there on Wednesday of next week, May 3rd. Details here.
The biggest orienteering weekend of the year is upon us now, with the Irish Championships at Oughterard on Saturday (Middle distance), Sunday (Long) and Monday (Relay). Disappointingly we only have one 3ROC relay team entered this year, in the Handicap 12 class. The date clashes with exams so some of our top runners can’t stay for the full weekend or can’t travel at all, but we do have more than ten 3ROC members running.
All eyes will be on Colm Moran and Eoin McCullough in the M21 Elite class, and on Leinster Champion Valdas Tilunas in M40. The Irish Champs is important in its own right, but also as a selection race for events like the Junior World Championships, the three Home Internationals, the European Youth Championships and the World Championships. You can follow the event here. 3ROC involvement doesn’t stop there, however, as John McCullough is controlling the Relays on Monday. Fingers crossed for the weather – all the areas are open mountainside in Connemara!
There’s a short break after IOC but the next Leinster League event is at Ballyward, east of the Blessington Lakes, on Sunday 14th May, and the weekday evening events are starting at the Curragh, Co. Kildare, on Tuesday 16th May.
Good luck to M14 Cuan Riordan and M16’s Ben McDowell and Aidan McCullough at the Irish Schools’ Championships in Castlecomer on Thursday 27th April.
Well done to Ronan Cleary who qualified for the A-final in the M55 sprint race at the World Masters O-Championships in New Zealand on Sunday. Ronan finished 61st against the top orienteers in the world in his age class. Here is the A-final map of the University of Auckland.
Finally, a reminder that, if you’d like to join 3ROC, or if you haven’t yet paid your annual subscription, you can do it online here, now.
See you in the forest!