World Orienteering Week news – 15 May 2019

WOD bannerIt’s World Orienteering Week this week and there are more than 1000 events in about 80 countries taking place to allow people to experience orienteering.

Our event on Sunday 19th at St Catherine’s Park, between Lucan and Leixlip, will have two courses of about 2.5 and 4 km, and you can start any time from 11 am to 1 pm. We’ll have volunteers there to show you what to do: what the map means, how to tell what direction you are going, how to judge distance etc. We’ll also have a small scatter event where you can visit 20 controls in any order if you just want a training run. All welcome!

The event is open to everyone, young and old fit and unfit: just come along and have a go! If you are already orienteering, this will probably be too easy for you, but feel free to come along and go for a run with a map anyway! Here’s a location map for the park.

Last weekend’s event at Trooperstown, Laragh, saw the courses largely confined to the forested part of the area, near the Avonmore River: the nicest parts of the forest, with bluebells, tall beech trees and earth banks. Good runs from 3ROC’s Colm Moran, 1st on Brown; Cuan Riordan and Clíona McCullough, 1st and 3rd on Blue; Ana Mandic and Una Coghlan, 1st & 2nd on the new Short Green, and Tom and Stanley Cox, 4th & 5th on Yellow. Well done! Thanks to GEN for a great event.

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                      Contours at Scarr

Technical Training: David Healy (GEN) is putting on a free training session at Scarr, near Glenmacnass, Co. Wicklow, on Sunday 26th May. His last session at Massy’s Woods went down very well. Scarr is open mountain with interesting contours on the top and the session will focus on contours, those squiggly brown lines you often see on O-maps. E-mail gen@orienteering.ie to register. There’s plenty of forest too, so there’ll be something for everyone!

Table quiz: The Friday before David’s contour session, GEN are having a table quiz at The Goat pub in Goatstown. You can come with a whole team of make one up on the night.

Congratulations to the 3ROC runners selected for the Irish teams for the European Youth Championships in Belarus and the Junior World Championships in Denmark, over the summer. We’ll add the names when the teams are officially announced!

Screen Shot 2019-05-15 at 15.33.35Car window stickers are available again: get yours for free from the club. If you have changed your car in the past few years you probably won’t have got one of these from the last batch. They go on the inside of the window.

 

Summer midweek events have started again: the first was the Naas urban event last Tuesday. Start times are typically 6.30 to 7.30 but check the details on the IOA Fixtures List here or on the IOA Forum here. The next ones (all on Tuesday evenings) are:

21 May Mullaghreelan Wood, Castledermot, Co.Kildare (CNOC)

28 May Donadea, Clane, Co. Kildare (CNOC)

4 June Newbridge (urban) (CNOC)

11 June Curragh, Co. Kildare (CNOC)

18 June Hollywood, Co. Wicklow (+ BBQ) (CNOC)

July 2 Skerries, Co. Dublin (urban) (FIN)

July 9 Kilbogget Park, Ballybrack, Co. Dublin (GEN)

Aug 13 Phoenix Park (3ROC)

Aug 20 Phoenix Park (3ROC)

Aug 27 Phoenix Park (3ROC)

Apart from these, there’s plenty of orienteering on around the country over the summer, with midweek events around Cork, Belfast, Antrim and other places. Remember the weekend of June 21-22-23 when LVO have their Tollymore Festival of Orienteering, with an urban race in Newry and two events on Saturday (Slieve Croob) and Sunday (Tollymore), with camping at Tollymore Forest Park. Watch the LVO website for details.

Orienteering information over the summer will be on the 3ROC Facebook page here, rather than on the website, so don’t forget to check it regularly – and, no, you don’t need a Facebook account to visit us there! We’ll be on the move – running in Finland, Scotland, Norway, Latvia, Belarus and Denmark, to name but a few!

See you all in the forest!