Orienteering News 9th January 2018

The final league event of 2017, Trooperstown on New Year’s Day, was also a great start to the new year, with the courses visiting parts of the area that had not been used recently and avoiding the exposed open mountain. Well done to Clodagh Moran, 2nd Lady in the League on the Blue course. You can see the results and routes here. Thanks to GEN for organising.

Dublin by Night starts in Phoenix Park 
The Dublin by Night series starts this Saturday, January 13th, with the traditional 3ROC event in the Phoenix Park. If you think you know the Park, come and take the challenge! We’ll be based at the Garda Sports Grounds across the main road from the Polo Grounds. As usual there will be two courses, of about 3.5 and 7 km.

This year we’ll have a mass start at 6.45 pm instead of individual starts, as the courses are gaffled (with butterfly loops that you run in different sequences). This is a change from the previously-published information.

Planner John McC always likes to introduce some extra variations (remember the even/odd score event on Three Rock last month, or the 3ROC 40th Anniversary event with the back-to-front map a year ago?).

Parking location map here. Bring your headlight or torch! If you arrive too late for the mass start you can still run but the mass-start will add an extra bit of excitement so please try to be in time. Last start for stragglers will be 7 pm and courses will close at 8.15 pm.

Public transport: Bus 46A to Phoenix Park; Luas Red Line to Heuston Station; Dublin Bus 25, 26, 66, 66A, 66B, 67, 69 to Islandbridge.

Maps will be pre-marked; tea and bikkies and shelter afterwards. There are toilets available and changing rooms where you can leave your stuff. As always, a few helpers would be great, particularly to take in controls afterwards: e-mail 3ROC here to volunteer.

Sunday 14th January The following day (Sunday 14th) the WatO event at Castlecomer, Co.Kilkenny, is a Leinster League event (and a Munster League and a South East League). It’s an interesting area, with forest and a section of old gravel-pits with quite complex contours, and only an hour and a quarter from the Red Cow/M50.  The event will use SIAC (SI Air contactless punching) so if you have a SIAC card, bring it and save precious seconds on your course! The location is the Castlecomer Discovery Park where there are toilets, a great café and a coal-mining museum – see more here and see the orienteering map and 2014 courses here.

Interested in Sports First Aid? Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown Sports Partnership are running two sports first-aid courses in April and October. See here for details. They’re also running Child Safeguarding workshops right through the year – see details here. If you’d like to do any of these courses, 3ROC will pay the fee for you (this applies to 3ROC members only!)

Annual subscriptions for 2018 are now due – you’ll get a reminder e-mail in a few days to invite you to rejoin. If you joined since mid-2017 your subscription runs to the end of 2018 anyway.

See you in the forest!