Happy New Year from 3ROC!

Witches and angels at the Xmas Score event: Catherine King and Con Carroll.

Happy New Year everyone! Another O-year starts, with people changing age class (your age class is determined by your age on 31st December 2019), lots of great orienteering in prospect, and our first event of the year on January 12th.

Thanks to all the helpers at our Christmas Score Event on Three Rock on St Stephen’s Day: we had almost 200 people running, split 50:50 between regular orienteers and occasional or first-timers. The 50 minute score event worked well, as it gave us time to get the entries logged in to the results system before the people came back (Thanks, Emma!).

Colm Hill finished first, despite having no fancy dress, and Trevor Hodkinson came second, benefitting from the 30 additional points his fancy dress conferred! Róisín Long was first lady, closely followed by 3ROC’s Clíona McCullough, finishing on the same points as her brother Aidan.

Con Carroll yet again put in the best effort on the fancy dress front, transforming himself into a formidable witch – see the photo on the left!  You can see the full results here.

         Christmas Day on Three Rock

A few hardy souls made it to the top of Three Rock Mountain for the annual Christmas Day run, now in its 42nd year (or thereabouts!).

Next event: The next Leinster event is our Dublin by Night No. 1 on Saturday 12th January in the Phoenix Park. There will be a mass-start at 7 pm sharp, so make sure you are there by 6.30 to register and get ready. For insurance reasons, night-O is only for M/W16 and above so if it’s your first time to try orienteering, we’d suggest you try it in the daytime rather than at this event.

On Sunday 13th January there is a combined Leinster and South East League event at the Castlecomer Discovery Park in Co. Kilkenny: a nice forest area with some challenging contours in an area of old gravel pits. There’s also a coffee shop, visitor centre and zip wire, so there’s something for everyone. See here for information about the park.

More Christmas fashion from Clíona and Róisín

The next 3ROC events for 2019 are:

January 12 Night-O, Phoenix Park

April 7 Leinster League, Pine Forest

May 19 St Catherine’s Park, Lucan,  come and try it event

August three midweek evening events

September 8 Leinster League, Three Rock

December 26 Xmas Score event.

There may also be a couple more in there but that’s what’s planned at the moment. We’d love you to volunteer to help!

The final 2018 issue of CompassSport magazine has just come out, with the annual preview of big events for 2019 – it’s worth the annual subscription just for that. 2019 events include the JK in south-east England at Easter, the Scottish 6-Day in August, the World Championships in Norway in August, indoor orienteering in Stockholm and Zagreb in February, the Mediterranean Championships in Malta around St Patrick’s Day, the Irish Champs in Fermanagh and Tyrone (early May), lots of summer events in Scandinavia, city races, sprints, night relays, multi day events … the list goes on! See www.compasssport.co.uk to subscribe.

If you’re thinking of going to the Jan Kjellstrom O-Festival (“the JK”) in England at Easter, the cheapest entries close on 13th January. It is always a selection race for the Irish Juniors so it’s an important event to include in the annual calendar. Details here. Note that start times for the sprint event on Good Friday are 12.00 to 3.30. If you’re an unseeded elite you will have an early start so you need to factor that in to your travel plans. This year’s entries are not cheap (up to STG£30 per day for adults for a March entry to the Long race). Junior/student rates are roughly half that. In comparison to these fees, the saving for an early entry isn’t actually huge. If you’re not fussed about running in a Championship class, just enter  a colour course which is a lot cheaper. Relays entries can only be made by a club nominee and are frighteningly expensive (£70 per team of three for adults). 3ROC pays for club teams (at Irish Champs and JK, for example) so that’s another good reason to join the club! (We also give grants totalling about €1000 per year to 3ROC members selected for Irish teams, so bear that in mind too!)

Finally, annual subscriptions to 3ROC are now due for 2019. Sign up on line here.

Have a great orienteering year in 2019 and see you in the forest! It’s more fun with a map.