Wednesday, December 9, 2009

The Connacht Champs in Ulster Once More

The Connacht Orienteering Championships 2009

The 2009 Connacht Championships were held on the Finner sand dunes between Ballyshannon and Bundoran in Co. Donegal on Sunday 30th November. Seven BOC members braved the weather and the distance and travelled to the event. Despite the recent severe rain and flooding, running conditions on the day were very good, and despite the cold weather some very good time were seen. The dunes were fast, but the numerous unmarked paths throughout meant that careful running was needed. The best navigational features were tall dunes with loose sand, marked with yellow on the map. These features were highly visible and great catching features. The longer courses used the entire complex dune network with the shorter courses sticking to the main path network.

An outstanding run by CorkO's Brian Corbett saw him win the M21 Long race by 35 seconds from CNOC's Colm Hill, in the closest finish of the day, with Gerard Butler (3ROC 3rd). In the W21 Long Maeve O'Grady (DFO) took an impressive first place ahead of Ciara Largey (FermO) and Ruth Lynam (CNOC).

Once again BOC members ran impressively with a number of solid runs and finishes. Paul O’Sullivan-Hourihan once again took third place in a major Championship in the M45 category, ahead of John O’Donovan (7th). Sons Josh (M18) and Zac (M12) finished 4th and 5th respectively. Other BOC Juniors, Christine O’Donovan (W18) and Alex Simonin (M16) also finished impressively taking 2nd and 5th places in their respective categories. Sharon Lucey also took 5th spot in the W21L competition.

Once again, Frank Ryan and his usual Connacht gang did an impressive job on the day and a big ‘thank you’ goes out to them for their efforts and organisation.

A full set of results can be found here



Tuesday, December 1, 2009

The Advent Calender of Orienteering


Here is a little something to keep the minds working on the run up to Christmas (courtesy of Rob McEvoy of CorkO who first told us about it)

Jan Kocbach at World of O (www.worldofo.com) is doing his "Route to Christmas" series again this year. It is sort of like an Advent Calendar of orienteering puzzles. Every day he uploads a snippet of a map from an Elite course from a 2009 race, and you must decide the route you would take between 2 controls. Then you can see the routes that some of the Elite runners took in that race. There is no analysis of the best route choice for each leg, but there is a comment section for people to discuss it amongst themselves. It also gives people a chance to see what sort of maps/routes are used for bigger events and for Elite courses. Hope you find it fun!

For your daily installment click here

You can also view the archived puzzles from 2007 and 2008 here: