Loch Vaa 18th September 2010

BASOC are hosting one of three orienteering events over the weekend of 18th-19th September.

Aberlour 18/09/2010
Superb mix of woodland, parkland and and urban on a brand new map in an area brand new to orienteering. Starts from 10.30 am to 11.30am Park at Speyside High School www.moravianorienteering.org

Loch Vaa 18/09/2010
One of the best forests in Scotland. Courses included Brown, Blue, Green, Light Green, Orange and Yellow Starts from 13.30 pm to 15.30pm Follow forest track at the end of Kinchurdy Road, Boat of Garten www.basoc.org.uk

Revack 19/09/2010
Coniferous forest near Grantown on Spy with plenty of features and challenging terrain. Starts from 10.30 am to 12.30am. Revack Estate signposted from A95 south of Grantown on Spey www.invoc.org.uk





View September 2010 O Races in a larger map

Kincraig Orienteering

Badenoch and Strathspey Orienteering Club held an event at Kincraig. The mixture of technical oak woodland and urban sprint seemed to go down well with competitors.

Results

The Long Course

Callum Scott at Control No.1

Donald Grassie at the Butterfly Hub No. 32

Crag foot at No. 11

Callum Scott at No. 13. Loch Insh and The Feshie Hills behind

Back into the village, the penultimate control No. 23

Ali Robertson, Kate Robertson and Ewan McCarthy discuss route choice at the finish

Northern Champs Trophy

I had to return the Northern Champs M50 trophy last week. The next Northern Champs is at the end of the month in the Peak District. I’m not going; too far to travel for a not particularly inspiring area. Anyway the import thing is, I managed to get my name engraved on the same pot as Pete Livesey!

Pete’s obituary in the Independent.

Contours

This is what inspires me about the sport of orienteering. I'm having new curtains made up in this design.

Light

After what seems like weeks of rain it was refreshing to wake up to a clear frosty morning. The Fieldfares were true to their word and there was even a light dusting of snow on hills.

Pat and I headed up to the Moray Coast for an orieteering event on the complex forested dunes of
Roseisle.

Burghead









Bob Daly prepares to do battle with the forest

Nimrod at RAF Kinloss

The Findhorn Community

Loch Vaa

The BASOC AGM was held today. Prior to the meeting we had the chance to run on the new 'ROMP' area.

Although I have run at Loch Vaa several times in the past I had forgotten what a truly amazing orienteering area it is - even better for having just a few other people in the forest at the same time. The fast, open and detailed terrain encourages total absorption of the map whilst the poor light and damp conditions enhanced the remote atmosphere of the forest.

After a few months lay off I had a fantastic weekend of orienteering at the Purple Thistle near Oban. Two excellent areas, quality courses and running reasonably well.

Results and maps here

Scottish 6 Days - Day 1 - Alvie

This is a very good area. Mostly open run-able forest with minimal bracken. I had a clean run but felt tired.

Results

WMOC Final

I had a poor run in the final, making a 10 min error at control 8 which dumped me third from last!

On the up side Liz Campbell dominated W50 to win Gold, Mark Saunders had a good run to finish 19th in M45, Jon Musgrave did extremely well to finish 17th in M45 seeing as he picked up the wrong map at the start and Anne Donnell finished just outside the medals in W75 in 4th.

Link to Route Gadget

WMOC Qualifying Event 2 M45-Heat 2

Link to Route Gadget



WMOC Qualifying Event 1 M45-Heat 2

Link to Route Gadget



Results

WMOC Model Event 2

I’m feeling more confident after today’s model event although I still made a couple of errors. I find it difficult to make the judgement of whether to run the line or to run out to the nearest linear feature. Some controls in flat areas are very difficult to hit and if you are 50m to one side you probably won’t see it even in white. With such low contour detail mashes and vegetation boundaries will be key along with accurate compass and distance judgement.

Again the map doesn’t look very inspiring although it was better than it looks.

WMOC Model Event 1

It was nice to have some controls out in the terrain. I made fewer mistakes but still found the terrain vague and extremely tricky. The map looks fairly straightforward but the ‘white’ belies the density of the underlying vegetation. It’s very easy to run within a few meters of a control and not see it.

Special mapping symbols are brown X’s, which are anthills, and linear brown dots show the direction of planting ditches.

I have travelled to Ruka in Finland for The World Masters Orienteering Champs. The first qualifying event is on Tuesday and I’m trying to get as much training in as possible to familiarise myself with the terrain.

The areas I have trained in so far have varied from rough and not very inspiring to fast detailed pine forest similar to Loch Vaa near Aviemore.

Some sections (see bottom S.E loop) have good contour detail and regular ‘Lakes O’ technique seems to work well.

The flatter areas are very difficult to follow. Loosing contact would be disastrous. I’ve been trying to follow marshes and pace count in an attempt to attain acceptable accuracy.

Sorry about the quality of the map image, I don’t have a scanner.

Midnattssolgaloppen Day 4

I got caught out by the map changing scale to 15:000 on the last day and didn't realise until I'd messed up the first control. I had a bad miss on 5 as well. Despite a poor run I managed to hold onto 6th overall.

Results



Kavaloya Island west of Tromso

Midnattssolgaloppen Day 3

Midnattssolgaloppen Day 2

Results

Midnattssolgalopen Day 1

Results

Did some training in an amazing area today. Video clip below. Day1 of the Midnattssolgaloppen is in an area adjacent to this tomorrow.

I flew out of Manchester today to start a two and half week O trip in Norway and Finland. With the contracts exchanged on the new house and the excitement of competing in Scandinavia I’m hoping that I can turn the corner with my results.

Tonight I’m staying in Oulu Finland, having flown to Helsinki and then on to Oulu.

I’m driving to Norway tomorrow where I’ll meet up with Jonathan Lagoe and compete in the Midnattssolgaloppen

Monster drive 1

On the 5th of July I’m driving back from Tromso, Norway into Finland to compete in The World Masters

Monster Drive 2

Sorry about the lack of posts recently. I seem to have lost some focus over the last few weeks. A string of poor results combined with moving house might have something to do with it.

Here is a summary of my recent races:

The Twin Peaks. 9-10/06/07

I had a reasonable first day finishing 2nd but still miles behind Martin Bagness who was 10 minutes ahead. I guess having made the map must account for some time but not that much!

Because Martin wasn’t running on the second day all I had to was cruise round the course to win overall. Like day 3 of the Portugal O Meet, when I started with a similar attitude, I disastrously missed out a huge loop of the course without realising until I was walking back to assembly. Must remember never to take that approach again.

Results

Scottish Champs 17/06/07

I had a good run in the open but made a big error in a sketchy bit of forest towards the end which cost me 3 mins and loads of places

My route on Route Gadget

Eycot Hill 24/06/07

I had a fairly good run finishing just behind John Tullie on the brown course. The only problem being that I found a taped cane close to one of the real controls site and assumed that it was missing So, I miss punched once again!

Results