Contact

Email: watosecretary18@gmail.com
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For more detail about Schools orienteering,
check out the Irish Schools Blog
Also check out the Irish Orienteer Blog for all matters Orienteering




Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to one and all.

The highlight of the year has to be the JK event to be held for the first time in Northern Ireland. For seasoned orienteers and novices alike it is a chance to try a large scale event for the first time. Check out the website here. The brochure (which features our own Neil Dobbs) can be downloaded in pdf format here.
Anyone interested in purchasing a club top from Trimtex should email me to let me know if they are interested. I will post cost and other details shortly.

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Orienteering challenge

Click here to see a 6 minute clip from the Breakfast Challenge with Chris Evans...guess what it's Orienteering!

Friday, November 19, 2010

Greenane results








The results from the event held at Greenane wood, Colligan, Dungarvan on 21st November are uploaded here.

Thanks to Con Murphy for helping on the start, Contols out and some pix. Thanks to Angela Cox for Registration.

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Mahon Falls event




Full results are posted in the results section. Thank you to Pat O'Connor (Planner/Controls out), Norman Storey (Start/controls out), Elizabeth Storey (Registration), Hugh Dobbs (Start), Andrew Pim (controls in), Liisa Honkasaari (Controls in), Laura Cox (Download)

Results have been manually uploaded to incorporate adjustments for controls 201 and 207.

Monday, October 18, 2010

Tower Hill results

The results of the SE League event held at Tower Hill, Portlaw on Sunday 10th October can be found on the IOA website. Thanks to Con Murphy for his help putting out controls and starting on the day. The next event will be held at Davmore, Mahon Falls on November 7th.

Sunday, September 26, 2010

Tramore results

Thanks to Andrew and Liisa for putting on the event in Tramore. Full results can be found at the IOA website. Apologies to the last few runners as I pulled in control 12 by mistake too early but it did not affect the times.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Easter 2011


The Jan Kjellstrom International Festival takes place In the North between 22nd and 25th April, 2011. One of our club members is splashed across the front cover!!! Download the programme in pdf format

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Sunday, August 29, 2010

JFK results

Results from the Non League, Come and Try it event held at Kennedy park as part of Heritage Week can be found on the IOA website. Apologies to those who are interested in their splits as there seems to be some problem uploading these without errors. Will work on ironing out the problem.
Thank you to Angela and Jana for their help in running the event.
The next event will be the schools event at JFK on 21st September. If anyone is able to lend a hand, I would be delighted to hear from you. The next club event will be in Tramore on 26th September.























Sunday, August 22, 2010

Change of Direction in Sport

If you missed the Health Supplement on Tuesday in the Irish Times...here is the link

Thursday, August 19, 2010

WMOC 2010


No pre-qualification....it is your chance to participate in a World event with former elites and regular club orienteers from all over the world. I went to Switzerland with the premise that there is always someone a) worse than you and b) will mispunch or not finish the course on the day.
Any age, shape and size can be seen at the World Masters..ranging from new born babies of 35 yrs old to the grand daddy of them all who is over 95 and still going strong.
In the past couple of years they have brought in sprint qualification. There was not a great demand for it once but now most people compete in the short form of street O. Age classes are divided up into random groups/heats for qualification in La Chaux de Fonds at the heart of watchmaking Switzerland. At M50 (my class) there were 294 sprint competitors divided into groups of around 60. I was in heat 2 which was won by Jorgen Martensson (a former Norwegian elite). Despite a mistake in the middle part of the course I finished the 2.3 km in 18.29 which was enough for 27th place. (25 seconds quicker and I would have finished 20th!) This qualified me for the B final. The photo shows what happens when the Sport Ident system cannot manage the numbers of finishers...fortunately I was an early starter and avoided the queues that built up in the centre of the town.

Despite another error of interpretation near the finish in the final in the old streets of Neuchatel, I had a respectable run 16.08 and finished 49th out of 80. Tiny errors of judgement can cost many places but overall I was delighted with this.
The Long Distance Qualification races were much more challenging. The first day was 7.5 km at Les Breuleux. The many open runnable areas made the times fast if....and only if you did not make it a mistake. Relocation in the early part of the course was tricky. This cost me a wopping 24 minutes on 2 controls. I ended up in 44th out of 53 in my heat.
The second qualification took place at Les Cernets over the shorter distance 5.5km. More queues as they underestimated the time taken to transfer 6000 competitors up to the competition area by bus shuttle.
I had a marginally better run but still too many errors and finished 41st in my heat. Despite this, I ended up in the C Final which was a big improvement on the D Final four years ago in Austria.
After a rest day, the finals took place at Le Cernil.
This was to be my best run. Started off cautiously and used simple handrails and catching features to spike the first two controls. The 3rd control nearly proved my downfall as I lost 10 minutes in some harmless forest with plenty of tracks. Misread the tracks and had to relocate. From then until the end I had a near perfect run for me and caught up loads of places to finish 29th out of 83 in the C final. Next year I can look forward to moving up to the equally competitive M55 class.

It would be great if there was more Irish and specifically Waterford representation in Hungary next summer of in the Harz mountains in Germany in 2012. There are open events for younger age categories as well up to W18 and then open for other less competitive adults.

Orienteering in the Alps: Tyrol 2010

After a false start out of Waterford airport when Aer Arann in their infinite wisdom decided the flight was not taking off as they were unable to refuel it, the Cox family trekked off by car to the Italian Dolomites. Evening ferry out of Rosslare to Fishguard, arriving in the middle of the night, cross Britain to the Channel Tunnel. 7.30 a.m. train under the English Channel and arrived in France 35 minutes later. Autoroutes, autobahns and autostrada galore as I drove through the day into NE France, south of Stuutgart in Germany, around Munich and south to Innsbruck in Austria. Getting dusky by this stage as we crossed the Europa bridge and on through the Brenner Pass to Italy. Almost as far as Bolzano before entering the Eggetal where the first three days of the Tyrol 6 day Orienteering event was to be held.The event centre was a small village in the Dolomites called Deutschnofen. The first two days however were held close to the Karersee. A beautiful setting at over 1600 metres and some of the toughest orienteering that I have encountered. The image of the boulder does not tell the whole story...it was like being in the middle of a rock fall and the whole area being covered with dense vegetation...tricky detail!
No wonder they call the map, the Labyrinth.












After 3 days of sweltering heat on the Italian side of the border, we headed north to Innsbruck and the Wipptal.
The rest day featured an evening sprint race in Fulmes
at the end of the famous valley which has the Stubai Glacier at the upper end.

Days 4 and 5 involved getting a chairlift to the competition area. Despite the very steep run in to the finish, it was more normal forest for the most part.



The final day was at the scenic Oberbergersee with a mixture of runnable forest and some technical rockfall areas.

Final SE League Standings

Producing League positions proved more difficult than expected. There is a standard programme to calculate these but the following problems arose.
1. competitors using abbreviated forms of their names
2. Munster League events provide 6 colour coded courses so that there is a crossover between light green, red and green.
3. Age categories change on January 1st which means some youngsters move up to a harder course.
4. Family groups are to be encouraged but makes it difficult to work out which youngsters merit prizes.

Blue Course: 1. Pat/Patrick Coady. 2. Willie Fitzgerald
Green Course: 1. Liam O'Brien. 2. Steve Hogan
Light Green Course: 1. Sue Pim. 2. Jonathan Pim
Red Course: the Counihans: Charlotte, Sophie and William
Yellow Course: 1. Emma Pim

Anyone who has not yet collected their prize (book token) should see me at the next event.

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Tramore results








Thanks to the Pim family for all their hard work in running the recent event at Tramore sand dunes. Full results can be found on the IOA website. Please note that the completion times are correct but something went wrong on the start control. We suspect it is still 1 hour out of sync with the other units.

Monday, May 3, 2010

Sunny day out at Kennedy Park



























A huge crowd (estimated 170) took part at the SE League event at Kennedy Park today. Results have been uploaded manually to the IOA website.
Apologies to anyone who wants to check their splits..I had to reprogramme the Start control as the battery died but forgot to reset the time. Results therefore were out by one hour. If anyone cant live without their splits, I can email you the raw data for you to peruse.
Solved our ongoing problem with OR thanks to a combination of advice from Rob, Brian and Nigel. Transfered download to Intrepretative centre and system worked perfectly...power issues.

Anyone interested in a simple sprint O /training event are invited to be at the Waterford regional Sports Centre at 2 p.m. on Saturday 8th May by kind invitation of the Waterford Sports Partnership.

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Training exercises


For those of you who are missing having orienteering events you may be interested in this website with Training exercises.
O-training.net

Monday, April 12, 2010

April break

Those who read this blog might wonder why there are no local orienteering events during April.
At Easter, the Jan Kellstroem event takes pace in the UK. This year the Cox and Casey families represented the club in Devon.
The Irish schools competition takes place on April 15th at Glengarra wood, near Cahir.
On Sunday 18th, there is a Munster League event on the sand dunes of Inch in Co Kerry.
The Irish club championships take place at Coleraine University for the Sprint (Friday 22nd), and Magilligan sand dunes (Saturday23rd).
Please note that the next event takes place on Bamk Holiday Monday 3rd May at Kennedy park.
The Leinster Club championships take place at Carlingford, County Louth on May 9th.
We then host the final Munster League event on May 16th at Tramore.

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

WSP Training

On a bitterly cold morning, 60 enthusiastic and not so enthusiastic young people from Waterford City took part in some basic training at Kennedy park. The first part covered the concepts of distance (pacing exercise) and direction (3 butterfly loops). The second part was an actual competition. Thanks to Paul Allen, Laura Cox, Shirley Fan and Louis O'Carroll for helping run the event.
Three groups failed to punch the start properly so no result came up on the computer...sorry to Niamh, Lisa and Niamh, Paul, Daryl and David, and Emma and Catherine.
Course A ....1. Craig, Hassan and Dean; 2. Steven and Josh
Course B ....1. Agnes and Claudia; 2. Niamh and Siobhan
Course C ....1. Rachel and Abigail
Course D ....1. Mark and Florian
Course E ....1. David, Bubbles and David
Course F ....1. Cian and Oran; 2. Shannon and Jade

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Beautiful day out at Colligan





















































Over 60 competitors of all ages took part in the event at Colligan wood today.
Full results can be found at the IOA website. Thank you to Con (controls in), Angela (Registration) and Laura (photos and download) for helping run the event.
A couple of thoughts from the Planner: many of those on the Red course found difficulty distinguishing between a ride and a small track on the map. A ride is a firebreak between lines of trees. Sometimes they can have single trees growing in them. Sometimes there are additional extraction rides from recent forest activities that are not mapped. Check out the explanation of map symbols here.
Another problem was the Pit (control 221). In fact it was accurately mapped but confusion arose over additional extraction rides. The boulder on the opposite side of the path was incorrectly mapped and should have been 30 metres to the west.