July 2012/1

World Championships Team Announced

A thunderclap, a flash of light and the dam bursts: a river of fire floods out from the field towards the forest: the 64th Jukola relay has started.

The thunderclap was a Finnish Army tank used as a starting pistol for the 1500 teams running into the Nordic twilight. It is 10.30 on a June Saturday night and we are in Vantaa, 10 km from Helsinki Airport. Teams have come together from all over Europe and from further afield to take part in the world’s biggest orienteering relay. The organisers expect some fifty thousand people at the event over the weekend – between teams, spectators, families and supporters.

A few Irish runners are involved: Nick Simonin, running for his Swedish club Lidingo, placed 40^th , Colm Moran and Conor Short running for their Swedish club OK Tisaren (132nd), Niamh O’Boyle, Julie Cleary running the Venla for London OK, and myself and Ronan Cleary also running for London OK.

The orienteering kicked off with the women’s 4-leg “Venla” on a baking Saturday afternoon: a small affair of only 1272 teams sent out to make tracks in the forest for the men later (Not really! It’s a very serious and hotly contested race). The legs of the Venla range from 5.7 to 8.5 km. The runners were going out in 31 degrees at 2 pm , but later in the day things cooled for better running conditions. (Unfortunately the weather changed for later runners in the Jukola on Sunday morning, with heavy rain and 13C).

This year’s Jukola was the biggest ever: 1689 teams of seven. The competition centre was based at a sports centre with a running track, sports pitches, swimming pool and outdoor skating rink. All the facilities were close together: food, assembly, toilets, the field of army tents for the teams. Only the showers and sauna were a bit out of the way.

I was a member of a loosely assembled London OK team consisting of three Finns, two Irish and two English runners. We have had much the same group running at Jukola for several years – I think this was my 7^th outing – and there was the usual jockeying for who runs which leg, or maybe who doesn’t run which leg!. This year, fitness and injuries played their part in determining who ran what. The first leg, the “river of fire” mass start, is probably the defining leg of the Jukola, where you get swept along in the flood through the night for 12.8 km. The first three legs (12.8, 12.7 and 14.1 km) are largely night legs (at least for the faster teams), then the 7.8, 8.1 and 10.3 km legs in dawn and daylight and the final 15.5 km leg to the finish, making 80 km in total. None of us wanted to do the last leg, but Ronan decided that the buck stopped with him and took it on.

Bear Rock?
Before the Venla started the announcer warned the runners that there was an out of bounds area used by hunters (archers, actually) with life-size elk, boar, bears and wolves as targets: don’t be frightened if you see them. He repeated the warning for the Jukola runners: could be unnerving at night. In a departure from the norm (reportedly to improve TV coverage), the mass start maps were not strung on wires above the heads of the runners, but put on the ground at their feet.

Evening. Time to plan. Eat about 6 pm (the food is good, about €8 for a main course with bread and a drink. Take your plate and eat on tables in the open air). Go to the orienteering shops and sports supermarket (they usually have good value in sleeping bags and other bits and pieces). A huge selection of O-gear, shoes, headlamps (from €10 to €800) and anything you can think of. Except bananas: for some reason there was no supermarket this year and you couldn’t get a banana, the staple food of the distance athlete, for love or money. And this year the usual betting office, where you could bet on who would win the race, seemed absent too.

8 pm: time for the first leg runners to eat. Join the queue. There’s obviously a problem – they have run out of food and they won’t have any for another hour! Disbelief. Go to look for a grill selling something: at last, pytt y panna (fried potatoes with bacon – a lifesaver). Later, the food arrives for the restaurant proper and calm is restored.

Jussi ran the first leg, doing the predicted 2 hours 22 mins, then David Rosen took over. He had predicted 2.5 hours but finally came back in 3 hours. His headlight had given up and he had to use his back-up light just to read the map.

Pasi, another Finn, ran the third night leg in 2 hours 33, just 3 minutes longer than his prediction. We were now nearly 8 hours into the race. (I never met Pasi: he lives close to the event so he came from home, ran, and went home again.) At this stage we were running a good bit behind schedule: I had anticipated running the 5^thleg at about 06.30 so I set my alarm in the tent for 05.45 (03.45 Irish time). We were able to check how our team was doing on the internet by phone, so I realised I wouldn’t have to run until about 8 am so I turned over and tried to sleep. The PA system came to life again around 5 a.m., though, to announce the progress of the winning teams (expected to finish about 06.30) so sleep was impossible.

After a coffee, a doughnut and a bowl of porridge I was ready to run. Through the EMIT card check, scan my race number bar code (“John?” Yes. “Go ahead”). Into the start field. Over to the computer station, put the EMIT card on the card reader to bring up my team’s position: I can see how David Saunders is doing at the radio controls so I know when to expect him.

David runs in, punches the finish, gives in his map in and runs around the U-shaped loop, takes my map for me and runs over to the changeover section for teams 1000-1200. “Any advice?” “Enjoy it. Just orienteer!”

I run out with a Finnish runner. He says something to me which I don’t understand (My Finnish is limited to essentials like “Airport”, “Porridge” and “Thank you”). He then explains in English that I should check I have the right map. Two of the top Finnish women’s teams in Saturday’s Venla were disqualified for taking the wrong maps. Conditions are perfect: dry, bright and cool.

The run to the start control was an incredible 1050 metres: across fields, up a hill through the forest (through a swathe of felling just for the event), down and across another field and up the hill to the triangle. It took me 7 minutes. Now the map – 10,000 scale, very clear: lots of hills, a few paths, lots of marsh and bare rock. The first control – a knoll – the key to the course and the most important control. Make sure you get it right. Round the side of the hill, across the marsh (feet wet and muddy already), keep the bare rock on your left: must be around here – there are some people about 10 metres to my right: that’s it, control 151. Excellent.

Now, take the small path – keep it simple – across the bare rock to the track, check where the first aid post is, down the spur to the 2.5 metre boulder. OK. Keep going: 3, 4, drinks station, 5 a knoll on the bare rock – visible from 20 metres. 6, 7 OK. – a longish leg to 8 across track – hill – marsh – hill -track. Through the green and up the hill – semi-open forest, a big boulder, a knoll: OK. I hear a cuckoo – much later than in Ireland. 9 along the low ground between the rocky hills, 10 down the steep hill and around the lake (left or right? Left looks slightly shorter and right has some out of bounds: go left). Pass some bemused fishermen, along some slippery wooden planks (should I have worn dobb spike shoes?)

Across the open marsh to 10? Forget it – too deep looking. Everglades. Around the path and across the crags. OK. 11: follow the path for a bit then over the hill – count the spurs. Along the top and drop down to the crag off the round hill with bare rock. OK. 12: across the reentrant and over the hill. Getting close to the end now – keep moving. 13 down the steep hill to the edge of the field, then a marked route for 390 metres. I see crowds of runners coming towards me on the outbound marked route – it’s the mass start at 09.15 for the remaining runners. The remaining 7^th leg runners had already gone at 09.00. Keep an eye out for our 6^th leg runner,Olli, but it’s just a blur of hundreds of people running towards me.

Into the last section: four controls plus the run-in. 14 OK, 15 easy – a bridge in an open field. A mistake going to 16 – should have run around the hill, not over the top, but no matter. 17 down to a boulder through the long grass – a path already made by earlier runners, then down the hill, over the bridge and down the finish chute into the leg 1-3-5 lane. Punch the finish, stop the watch, hand in the map, get a drink. 92 minutes for 8.2 km/345 metres climb. Slow enough, though: team in 1154^th place –  I gained 92 places. Happy with that, considering my fitness. No real mistakes. Big opportunities for time loss if you lose contact with the map here. My approach was to go for a run with a map, keep in contact and keep moving. It worked well, although the knees had not recovered from the Wicklow Way relay 3 weeks before.

Back to the tent. Get some food and drink. Then the rain came and the temperature dropped to 13 degrees. Heavier rain. Olli comes in from leg 6, a drowned rat. 1.57 as against a prediction of 2.00. He gained a further 47 places.

Now to wait for Leg 7, Ronan. The condition he imposed for running the final leg was that we be there at the finish for him. A good idea when the weather was sunny, but not so attractive in the cold and wet. So we stood in the rain and waited. Check the radio control times – should be in soon. Runners of all shapes and sizes coming in, looking at the last control, run down to it and – whoosh! – slide down the slippery slope on their backsides. An undignified approach to the last control. Groups of other runners play follow-the-leader: brain dead, they puzzle ov the last controls after visiting the leg 7 one only to realise (a) that it’s not theirs and (b) they haven’t a clue where they are because they switched off approaching the finish.

Ronan runs in, a marathon time of 3.15 brings us in to 1108^th in a time of 16 hours 17 minutes. The PA plays “Rawhide” (except the “Rollin’, Rollin; Rollin’ … ” sounded like “Ronan, Ronan, Ronan …” ) The words of the song seemed strangely appropriate, even if he wasn’t playing it just for us:

Rollin’, rollin’, rollin’
Though the streams are swollen
Keep them dogies rollin’
Rawhide!
Rain and wind and weather
Hell-bent for leather
Wishin’ my gal was by my side.
All the things I’m missin’,
Good vittels, love, and kissin’,
Are waiting at the end of my ride

The rain struck when he was half way around but he kept moving forward to the end.

At the front end of the competition, Finland’s Kalavan Rasti had 8 minutes to spare over Swedish club Malungs OK so Kalevan Rasti will run next year as team number 1. Last year’s winners, Halden from Norway, finished 3^rd, a further 4 minutes down. Halden took first place in the Venla, race, with Finlands Paimion Rasti second and Denmark’s OK Pan third.Some of us decided that it would be our last Jukola: the legs on the course aren’t getting any shorter and none of us is getting any younger (don’t ask the average age of the team!).

But then, look at the shapes, sizes and ages of the runners coming in. Look at the hundreds of teams behind us.
See the Jukola web site here for results, photos, routegadget etc. If you’re not there you can follow it live on the internet. Jukola party, anyone?
Look at next year’s Jukola in Jamsa. Two and a half hours drive north of Helsinki. One and a half from Tampere. Will Ryanair still fly there next June? How about Norwegian or SAS? Sandwiched in the middle of the Leaving Cert before Chemistry and Economics? Hmmmm….

Running Shorts

Ireland finished behind Wales in the Veteran Home International in the Mournes on July 16/17th. It’s a foregone conclusion that England and Scotland will be out of reach, but there can be intense competition between the two smallest orienteering nations. Despite the men leading Wales by 39 to 38 overnight, the ladies didn’t fare so well and the relays on Sunday were a downward spiral where Wales extended their lead to finish with 149 points to 117. Meanwhile, England extended their overnight lead to beat Scotland by 258 to 220.
Conditions in the Mournes on Saturday were trying, with heavy rain and swollen streams but Sunday’s relays at Tollymore were run in better weather. Photos, results and information can be found here.
Traditionally the VHI has been held in October or November, typically on exposed open mountain areas in far from perfect weather. Running the event in June seemed like a good idea, I’m sure, but it did have the side effect of moving November’s weather forward 5 months …

Setanta Rogaine Report

Setanta Orienteers’ ran their 15th Rogaine in Wicklow on June 23/24. Not too many orienteers were running this year, but you can see the resultshere. This year the 24-hour competition started at 2 pm on Saturday and the 6-hour at 8 am on Sunday, so they would both finish together. Stephen and Timothy Martin (Dark Peak Fell Runners, UK) won the 24 hour and Steven Linton (NWOC) won the 6-hour.
The start was near Glashaboy, in the Wicklow Gap area, but many of the controls were much further north, meaning that a return to base for food, rest and shelter wasn’t such an attractive option this year.

Training in Tramore

Gaelscoil Philip Barun participated in a training session in Tramore at the end of term. Thanks to Veronica, Laura and Robert for their help in organising the event
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Training day in Waterford

Pupils from 4th and 5th class from St Marys National school, Ballygunner orienteering at the Ballygunner GAA grounds at the end of term. Huge thanks to Jana and Robert for the help with the event.

more pix below

Mixed weekend at World Cup in Switzerland for Nick

Two very contrasting courses faced the world’s top orienteers in Switzerland. The middle distance on Saturday (a mixture of both orienteering and much taped route!) saw Nick finish in a disappointing 83rd position behind Swiss winner Matthias Kyburz. In Sunday, a sprint around the St. Gallen old town gave a great result, finishing in 17th in a competitive B final (results). Nick has been competing well in sprint races this year and is a good prospect for his second WOC sprint final.

You can re-watch GPS tracking from the top runners at the World Cup PostFinance homepage.

Next up for the Irish team: WOC! 

EYOC 2011 – Czech Republic

The Irish EYOC team has left for Czech Republic and Jindřichův Hradec.  They will spend a few days training on relevant maps and terrain before the competition starts up on Friday 24th with the Sprint.  On Saturday they will run the Classic and the Relays are on Sunday.

Nick racing in World Cup this weekend

With Jukola over, attention returns to the upcoming World Championships. This weekend there are 2 World Cup races in Switzerland in similar terrain to what awaits in WOC in July. Ireland have a sole representative – Nick Simonin will race in the 7km middle distance in St. Gallen on Saturday. To qualify for the PostFinance sprint race on Sunday, you must be amongst the top 40 competitors in the overall World Cup standings. Nick is currently lying in 73rd position and points from Saturday’s middle distance competition would put him in contention.

Selected competitors on both days will have GPS tracking. See the competition homepage for more information: www.postfinancesprint.ch

Good luck Nick!

Other team members are making their own preparations for WOC. Someone is taking no chance of ankle injury, and was spotted with his ankles strapped at a recent wedding. It couldn’t be noticed if he had his laces taped too…

Image courtesy of WorldOfO

Ireland’s WOC 2012 team

The team that will represent Ireland at the World Championships in Lausanne, Switzerland, between July 14th and 21st has been announced.

European sprint finalist Rosalind Hussey has been in good form this year and will race both the sprint and middle races. Ciara Largey will put her strength from her hill-running success to good use in the middle and long races. In the men’s team, a CNOC trio of Colm Hill, Hugh Cashell and Ruairi Short will be aiming to qualify for their first WOC final, alongside newly appointed High Performance Director Darren Burke of CorkO. The men’s team is completed by two previous WOC finalists. Nick Simonin will look to to repeat his appearances in the WOC finals of 2010 in the long and sprint. David Healy has been specialising in the sprint this year and will be racing for a place in the sprint final.

Women:
Rosalind Hussey (DUO) – sprint and middle
Ciara Largey (FermO) – middle and long

Men:
Colm Hill (CNOC) – sprint, middle, relay
Darren Burke (CorkO) – middle, long, relay
Nick Simonin (BOC) – sprint, long, relay
Ruairi Short (CNOC) – middle
Hugh Cashell (CNOC) – long
David Healy (GEN) – sprint

The WOC 2012 website is here: www.woc2012.ch
Many of the Irish team’s training logs can be followed at Attackpoint, here.
Thanks to the selectors and good luck to the team in the final stages of their preparations.

Irish at Jukola

This weekend the Venla and Jukola relays are being held near Helsinki in Finland. A number of the Irish senior and junior teams are taking part:

Colm Moran – OK Tisaren team 3 (team number 1393) – 5th leg
Conor Short – OK Tisaren team 3 (team number 1393) – 7th leg
Nick Simonin – IFK Lidingö SOK 1 (team number 42) – 1st leg
Niamh O’Boyle – GMOK (Venla team numbers 15 and 22) – reserve (running for Wing OK 3 team 1017, 3rd leg)

John McCullough is also running with London orienteering club (team 1020, 5th leg) with Ronan Cleary on the last leg for that team. In total an impressive 1658 teams will compete in Jukola and 1248 in Venla. Read all about the event and follow the results and GPS at the Jukola homepage: http://www.jukola.com/2012/en/

June 2012/2

Irish 3-Day, Co. Galway

Neil Dobbs (WatO/HVO), home from America, took the M21L class at the Irish Three Day in Galway on the Bank Holiday weekend, with Ruth Lynam (CNOC) taking the W21L title. Three testing open mountain areas south of Oughterard provided the terrain and the weather provided an additional challenge. After a week basking in the sun, the weather gods took their revenge on the Saturday evening and Sunday, with swollen streams, low visibility and uncertainty about what to wear.
The short courses at Sruth an Iolra on Saturday evening needed concentration to relate the map to the terrain, particularly in the boulder department, where the features seemed to me to be shown rather selectively. Some controls were visible from afar, which reduced the challenge, but the event was a good warm up for the classic race on Sunday.

Sunday’s race, planned by Martin Flynn, on a 1:7500 scale map, was a step up from the day before: navigation from start to finish, with long legs traversing the area, and an excellent area (reminiscent of open Welsh or Fermanagh limestone hillsides with sink holes and rock features) certainly challenged the runners: lots of finishers coming in with a rueful shake of the head, as much as to say “if only I’d been more careful!”.
The weather picked up for Monday, back at 1:10000 on an extended version of the Day 1 map, where Neil and Ruth came through to win in the chasing start. Well done to WEGO to run the event: I counted only about 7 officials in all, between mappers, planners, controllers, organisers and helpers.

Running these events must have seemed a doddle this year- after all, the area is only maybe 30 km from Galway and not on an island (like Inishbofin) or three hours drive away (like Lough Eske in Donegal, where they ran the event in 2010).  The organisers had three new maps on waterproof paper, they bussed runners from Oughterard to the event as there was no parking at the area, and had prizes for the winners,  all for a lot less than the cost of an IOC entry. Frank Ryan and WEGO are set to run the 2013 Irish Championships near Lough Eske at the beginning of May. It should be good!
Results are here. Routegadget is on the IOA web site here. Photos by Roger Duff are here. (PS Thanks to the good Samaritan who rescued my running shoes from the event car park after I drove away on Saturday evening!)

Senior Selection

Still no news as we go to press (as they used to say) of the World Championships team selection. The selection races were held at the Jubilee 5 events in Scotland which took many Elites away from the 3-Day in Galway. Nick Simonin and Roz Hussey were the fastest two Irish in both the Sprint and the Long races (Nick finishing 2nd overall in the Sprint). And the Long was long: 15.4 km with 650 metres climb for the men, with a winning time of 98 minutes. Ciara Largey and Nick were the best in the Middle Distance.
Controversy surrounded the Sprint race where a zig-zag final few controls and a thick purple line on the map lured some competitors into running from control 22 to 25 and to the finish (see the map section on the Senior Squad blog here). Some competitors finished, then realised, and went back out to get the controls in the right order. This is apparently allowed under BOF rules as long as you haven’t downloaded, but it is not allowed under IOF rules.
See all the details, results and routes here.

The Irish team for the Veteran Home International team to take on England, Scotland and (especially) Wales on June 16/17 in the Mournes has been announced. This event has traditionally been in October or November on the bleakest, most windswept areas, so maybe it will be a change for the better to have ferns, ticks and midges instead! The events at Tollymore and Meelmore are tied in with LVO’s O-Festival and there’s a street event on a new map of Newcastle on Friday evening, a barbecue and a lovely meadow to camp in at Tollymore
The team is:

The CNOC summer series ends on Tuesday 19th June with the barbecue at Hollywood, Co. Wicklow and a score event beside the village. Details on the IOA web site. However, you can still pick up some summer and autumn events locally: 3ROC are running four Tuesday evening events in Dublin’s Phoenix Park in August (7th, 14th, 21st and 28th), and Fingal’s now established “Scatter” series is on four Sundays in September.

Down Wicklow Way …

Apart from being the home of much Leinster orienteering, County Wicklow plays host to a number of other similar activities. Coming up is the 15thSetanta Rogaine on June 23/24, with a 6 hour event starting at 8 am on Sunday and a 24 hour event at 2 pm on Saturday. Both races use the Harvey’s Wicklow map. Detailshere.

Wicklow Way Relay – Runners from CorkO, Ajax, Setanta, Fingal and other orienteering clubs took on athletics clubs and adventure racers in the IMRA Wicklow Way Relay on 26th May. The race, from Marlay Park in Dublin to Shillelagh in south Wicklow, covers 127 km of forest and mountain trails. It was a perfect day for the run, warm, dry and sunny with a pleasant breeze,  and Rathfarnham emerged the clear winners in a time of 7 hours 9 minutes 52 seconds, with a close finish for 2nd and 3rd (8.02.25 and 8.02.57). Full results here. The top orienteering team was “CorkO & Co” in 6th place in 8.31.29.

Wicklow Round – Fermanagh Orienteers’ Billy Reed, running with Greg Byrne and Finbar McGurren, completed the Wicklow Round on the June Bank Holiday weekend in 20 hours 56 minutes on his first attempt. This is a truly outstanding achievement, writes Gordon Stephens – the Wicklow Round is the Irish equivalent of the Bob Graham round in the Lake district: 26 peaks, more than 100 km with 6000 metres climb in under 24 hours. See the IMRA web site here for background info.

Several LVO members took part in the Mourne Way Marathon on 9th June. A number of members ran the half marathon, full marathon or the ultra marathon ( 2 x marathons) round the Mournes. See here  for details and (maybe even) results.  Greg mcCann, well known in Junior coaching circles, was scheduled to run the ultra marathon …

More team pix from the Irish Schools Champs

Proud Chelsea teachers presenting half Nagle Rice 2/3rd yr team winners at Irish Champs

Newtown 1st yr boys winners

Newtown 1st yr girls 3rd place

St Marys Mallow winners 2nd/3rd yr girls

St Marys Mallow 1st yr girls winners