oldglutton6

Balmedie Wed 23/6/21

Short (Easy) 1.4km
Medium 2.3km
Short Tech 2.9km
Long Tech 4.6km

Registration is by the toilet block towards the southern end of Balmedie. (Toilets probably not be open though ones at main car park should be.)
Parking is along the roadside leading up to it.
GR NJ975176 what3words: gullible.motivator.gladiator

Juniors/Students £2.50, Seniors £5
Contactless payment on the day (but cash still accepted)
Start blocks spread out from 18:00 to 19:00 can be selected when you complete the pre-entry form:

Balmedie Beach Entry Form
Please complete and submit entry form by 21:00 Monday 11/6/21

First Aid kit will be available in the Organiser’s car at Registration.

Even though we’re in Tier 1 now not much has changed in terms of the Covid-19 precautions for Local O events with the exception that you can officially chat freely after the event providing you stick to current rules on group size/mix.

Scottish Champs 2021 Craig a’Barns

We have a Champion! Congratulations to M40S David Esson!

A few others took on this challenging area too:
Lesley Gomersall 4th W55L
Helen Rowlands 8th W50L
Neil McLean 2nd M75
Sam Gomersall 6th M60
Bob Daly 10th M60
Tim Griffin 4th M55
Gareth Yardley 7th M55

Foggieton Wed 16/6/21 Results

Thanks to Dennis for planning, Paul Duley for helping collect and David Esson on laptop etc.

Easy Results Splits
Orange Results Splits
Short Tech Results Splits
Long Tech Results Splits
RouteGadget

British Middle Champs 2021

Our roving reporter, David Esson, is currently down in the Lakes thoroughly enjoying a wee holiday and some fine orienteering areas for the British Middle Distance Champs. Keep an eye on our Facebook site for maps and mentions.

Middle Distance combines shorter classic courses and lots of controls so even the “long” legs still require concentration. Today (5th June) it was in an area called Summer House Knott and it “did not disappoint”. Three other Gramps are also competing – Tim Griffin and Bob Daly both narrowly missed top ten placings in M55 and M60 respectively, but looks like Sam Griffin had to pull out. Hopefully he’ll still be OK to try again tomorrow at High Dam.
Good luck guys!

High Dam update: Sam definitely back up and running and came 13th in M18E, 7th for Bob Daly, 17th for Tim but unfortunately looks like David might have crocked himself very early on in the course and been forced to stop as results show lots of missing controls. (It’s either that or the Newby Bridge Hotel food was just too tempting and he decided to go back for Sunday lunch – either way, hope you’re OK David).

Back o’ Bennachie Wed 9/6/21

Easy Results Splits
Short Tech Results Splits
Long Tech Results Splits

Routegadget

Thanks to Dave Kirk for planning and Dennis McDonald for helping collect controls and David Esson for computing and everyone who took on the hilly challenge of B o’B.

GMC – fingers crossed for 6th and 7th Nov

We’ve brought the weekend forward slightly at the request of the landowner so now targeting 6th/7th November.
Obviously things may change, and change back again, but when the music stops we hope to be able to offer marquees at the mid-camp depending on C-19 rules at the time but we’re pretty confident that otherwise everything else will be the same as previous planned – Lochnagar area, bag transport, lavish prizes, challenging courses and lots of fun to be had!

We hope to open entries in July so watch this space…..

Countesswells Wed 2/6/21 Results

Easy Results Splits
Medium Results Splits
Short Tech Results Splits
Long Tech Results Splits

Routegadget

Many thanks to David Esson for reminding us how Countesswells lulls you into a false sense of security every time.
Hands up who else got caught out at the pits at the far end again! 😦

A few more of the old faces coming out of the woodwork tonight, nice to see you. And plenty of new names I’m starting to recognise but haven’t yet met seem to have caught the bug and keep coming back for more too which is great to see.
Don’t forget that we’re happy to give you a bit of adhoc coaching or a debrief if you think it will help, just ask at registration as there’s always an experienced orienteer or hanging around.
(Equally, if you find you learn best by making your own mistakes then we’re happy to leave you to it!)

Is it mapped?

Another fun wee park for a bit of micro-O maybe?
Little Island, NYC, 2.4 acres manages to pack in 350 species of flowers, trees and shrubs.
Remember the arboreal trail map in Westburn and Victoria Parks? Something similar would work really well here.

Scottish Champs entries open 13/6/21

Scottish Champs (at Craig a’Barns) is open for entries: https://www.sientries.co.uk/list.php?event_id=8389
Details on ESOC’s site https://www.esoc.org.uk/events/craig-a-barns-jun-13-2021

Worth getting in quickly – only 500 entries allowed

Crathes 26/5/21 Results

Thanks to Helen Rowlands for providing tonight’s fun whirl round Crathes and Gareth for assistance with control wrangling and David for ‘puting and entries.

Easy       Results Splits
Medium Results Splits
Short Technical    Results Splits
Long Technical    Results Splits

Routegadget – did you know you can view splits graphically as well as upload/plot your routes on RG?

Hazlehead 19/5/21 Results

Hope you enjoyed the first of the Summer Series and our World Orienteering Day event. We’ll be reporting our numbers very soon to add to the grand total – it’ll be interesting to see what effect Covid 19 has – will it stymy numbers or will it boost numbers this year as lots of people realise that O is a good socially distanced thing as well as being a fun sport anyway?

Easy Results Splits
Short Tech Results Splits
Long Tech Results Splits
RouteGadget tomorrow (fingers crossed as I need to remind myself how first)
Download your WOD 2021 Diploma here to print out and put on your trophy wall

Ta muchly to John Lang for planning, David Esson for computing and Helen Rowlands and Gareth Yardley for helping collect controls ready for next week’s event at Crathes. Details will be posted tomorrow for that.

Scottish Junior Cup Race 30/5/21

Entries are now open for the first Scottish Junior Cup Race at Auchingarrich, Perthshire, on May 30th.
At this stage priority is being given to junior competitors and accompanying adults, but after 19th May entries will be opened to all SOA members until the maximum capacity of 200 is reached.

C’mon GJOs – now’s your chance to get back out there and practice ready for Six Days!
Enter before 19th May to avoid disappointment.

More info on SOA website.
Entries via Sientries

Child Protection / Safeguarding

Helen Anderson has been busy revising the child protection policy, aka Safeguarding, and a copy can be found here.

From 26th April we can attend other clubs’ events and City/Shire boundary officially permeable

So starting with Maroc’s Cambus O’May Forest Sprint Wed 28th April, fill yer boots!
Still need to be member of SOA/BOF or O club though, pre-entry via forms on websites etc etc.

WED 28/4 Cambus O’May (M)
WED 5/5   Dunnottar Woods (G)
WED 12/5 Denlethen Woods (M)

Few more Forest Sprints to go and then GRAMP’s Summer Series kicks in starting at Hazlehead 19th May.
Full list of planned venues is up on the Summer Series page now but please check individual posts nearer the time for updates as we may have to rearrange things on the fly depending on local travel restrictions or other C-19 factors.

Dunnottar Woods 5th May Results

Yellow Results Splits
Forest Sprint Results Splits

Thank you David once again for doing the honours for Dunnottar (although I suspect it may have been a sneaky ulterior motive involving proximity to one of the finest chippers in the NE that may have decided you to volunteer? 😉 )

Some lovely photos of the afternoon and pm on our Facebook page. Good to see so many faces both well kennt and new again. All looking like the Summer Series will be off to a flying start in 2 weeks time so here’s a quick run down on what we’re planning but check here for individual posts for each event with any updates, Covid related or otherwise.

MAY
19 Hazlehead Park  This just happens to fall within the first World Orienteering Week for 2021 so make sure to come along and celebrate with us.
26 Crathes
JUN
2 Countesswells
9 North Bennachie
16 Foggieton
23 Balmedie
30 Scolty
JUL
7 Tollohill
14 Mulloch
21 Glen Dye
28  No event (Six Days week lead up)
AUG
4  No event (Six Days week)
11 Tyrebagger
18 Templars Park

Tollohill Woods Wed 21st April Results

Yellow Results, Forest Sprint Results Splits

Shire’s turn to experience that weird feeling of sort of knowing what you were doing but also knowing you don’t really know at the same time. Took most of us until a couple of controls in before it became second nature again.
Thanks to David for providing us with a great wee sprint course on a great wee area on a peedie wee map – slight scale malfunction freely admitted and apologised profusely for. Apologies accepted. Ian Hamilton found the positive side: “At least there’ll be very little wind resistance running round with a map this size.”

Thanks also to Pete and Rachel for manning registration/download and to the control collectors who must not be named. 😉

Next up Dunnottar Woods in 2 weeks time. Watch out for a post with entry link etc very soon.

Perwinnes Moss Sun 18th April

Lovely day, smiling faces, good to be back!

Results Yellow Splits Short Splits Long Splits

Thanks David for putting in all your time and energy to get these events going again. Much appreciated.

If you couldn’t make it today, here’s a snip of what you missed.

Hazlehead Wed 7th April Results

Real O Events!!!!

YES, they are finally happening!

Here are results from Hazlehead – big thanks to David Esson for cranking the SI controls into BST-mode and persuading them they wanted to go and sit in a wood again after their cushty number sitting in his flat all this time and to Gareth Yardley for wrangling them back in before they had time to decide they actually quite liked it out there and went feral.

Yellow Results Yellow Splits
Forest Spring (LG) Results Forest Sprint Splits

We have other events in Aberdeenshire planned later in April/May:

Sun 18th April – Perwinnes Moss (City) (please note the venue change)

Wed 21st April – Tollohill (Shire)

Wed 5th May – Dunnottar (Shire) but fingers crossed by then we’ll be able to cross the boundary

Watch this space for details and pre-entry forms closer to the dates.

Got a few spare minutes?

Mairi Eades is doing a research project on about why adults in Scotland go orienteering for her uni Sport and Recreation Management degree. Could you spare a few minutes to complete a short questionnaire?

• Participants must be 18 or over, are living in Scotland (or would normally, if it weren’t for Covid) and currently or have previously orienteered.
• All answers will be anonymous, and the results will be observed in topic groups, which will be written up and published to the University and Scottish Orienteering.

Click here for the questionnaire.

DNC 2020/21 Final Results

Final results have been posted on the DNC blog.

We managed to squeeze in half a series this time before Lockdown stopped play so points have been tallied up for best 5 out of 8 events and any would-be planners of cancelled events still get 50 points for volunteering.

Although the DNC Cup was dominated by the Maroc youngsters again, GRAMP have a podium place in the Mini DNC Cup in the shape of Pete Lawrence. Congratulations!

DNC Cup: Dave Kirk, Gareth Yardley and Dennis McDonald all came in the top ten, Lesley Gomersall flew the flag for the ladies coming 14th overall and 2nd lady.

DNC Mini Cup: Pete Lawrence 2nd, Murray Anderson 7th, Julian Robinson just missed out on a top ten position and Helen Rowlands flew the flag for the ladies coming 18th overall and 2nd lady.

Big thanks to all the GRAMPs who planned, or offered to but then had their event cancelled, and to David Esson for doing the computing/SI wizardry for all our events.

GRAMP Gossip and socials

Next Social Thingy involves a quiz on Wed 17th @ 19:00. Check the main post for details.
BTW quiz part not compulsory if you just fancy joining us for a chat. We’d love to see you!

This week I’ll be working on the long threatened swap to a newsletter app for things like GRAMP Gossip rather than emails so watch out for a trial message and please respond so I know I’ve got it right! Rachel

HHH2021 Results

Thankyou to all who attended our annual 2nd January event at Hazlehead.

Results are below –

Long Course –

1. Patrick Lang 25.00
2. Dominykas Kardokas 25.17
3. Tim Griffin 28.10
4. Sam Gomersall 29.32
5. Lesley Gomersall 30.53
6. Julian Robinson 30.58
7. Dennis McDonald 31.33
8. John Lang 32.42
9. Hugh Nicholson 34.10
10. Lynn Smith 34.38
11. Marianne Lang 37.03
12. David Esson 38.35
13. Eric Lovie 39.59

Short Course –

1. David Esson 18.23
2. Ros Nicholson 18.48
3. Samantha McDonald 28.04
4. George Esson 37.00
5. Lindsey Esson 43.18
6. Daisy Cooper 45.44
7. Magnus Huthwaite 53.08
8. Joanna McDonald 55.13
Helen Greenwood -No Time Recorded

DNC 6/1 @ Hazlehead ***CANCELLED***

Well, looks like it’s probably game over for this season’s DNC now that everyone is back in Lockdown and SOA have tweeted that all orienteering activities are to be suspended until further notice which may be March so too late for night O. Hey ho! It was fun while it lasted.

DNC 23/12 @ Templars Park ***POSTPONED***

Annoyingly, Templars Park lies just beyond Aberdeen City boundary – only 300m or so but still technically off limits to city dwellers as per Tier 3 guidance on travel for informal exercise vs organised sports and SOA confirmed yesterday that we shouldn’t be encouraging folk to break the rules by accepting entries from anyone from ‘the other side’.

We haven’t had that many entries to date and as we were expecting the bulk of entries to come from Gramps who live inside city limits, and given that it’s a bit of a novelty event rather than a full-on TD5 DNC, we’ve decided to postpone for a while. Sorry to anyone who was looking forward to it, especially any kids or novices keen to tackle the Orange. We will run it at some point in the New Year as soon as we all get back to Tier 2.

I think for the time being GRAMP and MAROC have agreed to continue running events with entries limited to those who live on the ‘right’ side of the boundary (although there’s a couple of GRAMP ones where we may have to swap planners as they live on the ‘wrong’ side to their area – and when the music stops…!) and we’ll come up with some way of adjusting the league points to discount any events which fall into the Tier 3 trap.

In the meantime, stay safe and have a Happy Local Christmas everyone!

Have you peaked yet?

“The slope of these curves varies by task. For example, in sports that rely heavily on physiological fitness—like sprinting 100 meters—the decline of the fitness curve would be steeper than in a sport like alpine climbing or orienteering, where pure fitness matters less and wisdom gained through experience matters more.”
(Outside Online An Ode to Aging)

Want to move the curve for wisdom? Then look out for news on club training which we hope to recommence next year along with more Come and Try It sessions.

Calling all speccy wearers…

Would you like to help a Loughborough student, William Smith, help you by coming up with a solution to misty specs while out orienteering? Then please take a few minutes to complete this survey to help him get a better insight into the problem (his words not mine!!)

DNC 9/12 @ Foggieton Results

Sorry for the slight delay – a weird side effect of timing we’ve not seen before meant those of us with early starts had negative times before David managed to sort it all out late last night. BTW, thanks David for your help on IT and Starts at all the Gramp DNCs, much appreciated by the Planners and also runners – it’s Wed, it’s dark, there’s David standing in the middle of a wood with a clip board and a welcoming quip – a little bit of consistency while everything is so topsy-turvy still.

Short Results Splits
Long Results Splits
RG

Thanks to Dennis McDonald for succeeding in his mission to catch a lot of us out old hands out in an area we think we should know really well by now. Why is being “lost” in a 100m x 100m patch of terrain so addictive?

Is it mapped?

Dreaming of autumn city O breaks back in the old days…. this looks like it would be fun for a Friday night race to kick off a weekend. It’s in Awaza, a luxury resort in Turkey.

DNC 25/11 @ Dunnottar Woods

Short Results Splits
Long Results Splits

RouteGadget

Crathes 6/12 Results

We misinterpreted the messages about “Guides” and “car parks” and weren’t expecting a very well supported open air market going on full swing in the Guides’ field. Thanks to Sam and Lesley for taking it all in their Organiser/Planner stride and organising some impromptu parking marshalling on top of hanging the last few controls this morning.
Did anyone go shopping after their run? (Anyone who knows me and my email address won’t be surprised to find out that I was a bit annoyed when I got home, looked it up to see what it was all about and discovered I’d missed out on a chance to purchase goodies from “Flump and Fudge” amongst others!)

Yellow Results and Splits
Orange Results and Splits
Green Results and Splits
Blue Results and Splits
(BTW, I am working on how to get the flashy SI generated html results file uploaded to WordPress but a quick search for instructions talks about editing key files in the background and I wanted to get results up asap so it’s separate pdfs again for now while I chew it over until I feel brave enough to dabble!)

RouteGadget BOF points (calculated overnight)

Invoices have been fired out – you should have received an email from Grampian Orienteers c/o no-reply@izettle.com. You need to click on the “Show invoice” button and that will then open up a browser window showing an itemised invoice (Senior fees, Junior/Student fees, non-NTS member parking fee) and a payment button at the bottom for you to pay by card please. If you have any queries about your invoice contact webmaster@grampoc.com.

Have you visited the BOF website recently? See anyone you know?

Go on – take a careful look at the scrolling photos at the top…. https://www.britishorienteering.org.uk/home

DNC 11/11 @ Crathes Results

Short Results Splits
Long Results Splits
RouteGadget
BOF results

We parked in the bottom level of the car park initially but swiftly moved up after realising that the heavy rain at ~17:30 was being beautifully backlit by the headlights of cars on the top level and making it look really, really uninviting! We were eventually shamed into getting out and getting on with it by all those kids running around having great fun in the wet and dark.

Thanks to Ian Hamilton for planning and Paul Duley for stepping in to cover tonight and David for IT/Results/Start Ticker-Off in Chief.

Scottish Women and Girls in Sport Week 2020

Have you spotted the articles going up on the SOA site highlighting the achievements and contributions of various individuals?
Heidi Ross and Marie Bernards of AUOC were in the spotlight on Tuesday. They’re doing a great job currently coaching via Zoom amongst other things to help keep AUOC fired up about orienteering and it’s obviously working as it was good to see some of their teammates out at Balmedie for the first DNC including Lucie Hamplova and Margarita Radeva.
Nice to see the lads too obviously but you don’t fit the (rather binary) W&GSW criteria, so sorry, but no namecheck this time!

Sam’s in the Squads!

Congratulations to Sam Griffin on his selection for the ScotJOS Squad and the British Orienteering Talent Squad Tier 1. Despite the lack of events this year, Sam’s been keeping fit with lots of running and cycling and we had wondered if he would be able to remember how to orienteer still but any concerns were squashed on Wednesday night when he came over to the dark side and romped round the DNC Long course at Balmedie in 5th position on his first night O ever.

Check the announcement on the SOA website to see who his ScotJOS team mates will be. And the BOF site for the Talent Squad.

So now the question is… with no cake stalls allowed at the moment how are Team Griffin planning to raise funds this time?

Nothing to do with orienteering but…

…does feature three Gramps. Can you spot them?

DNC 28/10 @ Balmedie Results

Big thank you to Julian Robertson for starting us off with two great courses threading in and out of the dunes. So nice to feel the sand between your toes again even if, like me, your rusty O skills were really given a test tonight.

Short Results Splits
Long Results Splits

RouteGadget
BOF results

Glen Dye snaps and thoughts

Well, who would have thought all that mud, marsh, bog and assorted wet stuff would have produced so many excited, grinning faces? We’re a weird bunch!

It’s been a very strange few weeks as what was supposed to have been a simple little local event firstly attracted folk from far, far further afield than we’d ever have expected normally and then got snarled up in local lockdown shenanigans towards the end. I have to admit that at various stages of the process both Pete and I thought “Why bother? It’s bound to get cancelled due to another Lockdown.” But I’m glad we did. It was just as enjoyable for me watching those grins (and listening to the traditional moans about fitness or making the same old mistakes – nothing changes that much!) and we both appreciated it when many of you came to find us to say “Thanks for a great bit of old school orienteering” or “Thank you for rebooting the sport and helping us get out again.” You’re welcome!

Although it means fewer helpers required on the day with no Registration queue, we found the main complication was pre-entry and start time allocation during the run up to the event. I was on holiday for 2 weeks shortly after entries opened so a big thank you to Kimi Raikkonen (aka David Esson) for fielding all those emails and plotting the start times as well as acting as Covid Officer liaising with SOA. This meant all I had to do was think about logistics, normal safety stuff on the day, handling the money side and volunteers.
I think job sharing will be the way to go for a while now and why not into the future as well?

Also thanks to Helen Rowlands (non-runner) for putting in a shift as chief car park attendant assisted by Paul Duley and Ian Hamilton; the Gomersalls for overseeing the Green and Short Brown Start (Lesley’s doodling shows it was quite a relaxed affair obviously); Bob Daly and Tim Griffin, Ace Control Collectors Inc; George Esson who assisted David on Download; and last but not least, Jonathan Smith for helping me fish kit out of the shed and then ferry a lot of it back again after the event to save me another journey.

Rachel

Glen Dye Results 11/10/20

Thank you for everyone who attended today. We were very lucky with the weather.

Special thanks go to Rachel (Organiser) and Pete (Planner) for putting on a great event.

This was our first relatively larger event since Lockdown was eased, and also our first proper effort using the new SI Equipment, so I hope things went smoothly enough for the competitors.

Below should be the PDF of the results and splits.

David

Results for Glen Dye -11 Oct 2020.pdf

Split Times for Glen Dye – Orange.pdf

Split Times for Glen Dye -Yellow.pdf

Split Times for Glen Dye – Short Brown.pdf

Split Times for Glen Dye -Green.pdf

Routegadget     Apologies as this isn’t the georef’ed version of the map so all you GPS gadget fans will have to tinker a bit.
(Useless but mildly interesting fact: the last time we put something on  Gramp’s RG was Glen Dye night O in March.)

BOF results page with ranking points

Thank you, EUOC!

I just wanted to acknowledge EUOC’s sensible attitude to recent announcements and to thank them for their decision to pull out of our event at Glen Dye this weekend. Technically they didn’t have to as there is no travel ban as such but they’ve obviously taken on board the recent headlines that “researchers at UCL said 86.1% of infected people picked up by the Office for National Statistics Covid-19 survey between April and June had none of the main symptoms of the illness, namely a cough, or a fever, or a loss of taste or smell the day they had the test” and decided that discretion now, even though they feel fit and well and were really looking forward to a dose of Deeside, will hopefully help avoid a second full Lockdown later as well as showing concern for fellow orienteers and anyone else they may have come into contact with on the journey.

Thanks, guys!

Aberdeen University Urban MapRun 30th Sept 2020 Results

Here’s the results from tonight’s MapRun Event.

Great to see so many folk turn up on such after such a wet day, although it did stop raining in the end. Shortest distance covered was 3.1km (I think I measured the shortest route would be 3km) whilst others got more km for their money, some running over 4.5km.

This was sadly our last Urban Event due to the lack of daylight but hopefully we’ll to see some of you at the Glen Dye Event on Sunday 11th October. And we hope you’ve enjoyed the MapRun series. [end]

Aberdeen Uni Urban Map Run Results 2020.pdf

Results for Duthie Park and Ferryhill Urban Sprint 23 September 2020

Here are the results from tonight’s sprint event, corrected for Tim Griffin’s GPS placing him on somebody’s roof rather than at control 3….

Thank you to everyone who came!

Duthie Park and Ferryhill 23 September 2020 Results.pdf

Is it mapped?

Urban-meets-classic. Even just getting there would be fun, never mind keeping track of yourself in that maze.

Urban Sprint Westhill 16th Sept Results

Results

If you want to give us your time, Ros, we’ll update these?
We trust you! 😉

Urban Sprint Danestone 9th Sept Results

Results

MapRun results page
Click on anyone’s “Track” link next to their name to get through to the MR RouteGadget and you can replay the race.

If you’re wanting back into the MapRun event to adjust your pings (now there’s a phrase you don’t hear very often?) in MapRunF HITMO function the code is 9183. The code expires at 23:00 anyway after which anyone can go in and look at results.
From now on we’ll print the code on the map.

The GPS definitely seems to work better on some models of phone or a Garmin watch. Would be interesting to find out which phones folk are using as I suspect it’s an aging tech thing even though the tech in question is only a few years old. Mine’s a Samsung J3 c. 2016 which struggles to keep up with even my chugging pace and only pinged 9 times on the way round whereas Pete’s newer Samsung A40 c. mid-2019 got all 13 pings first time tonight.

MapRunF: how to amend your results for missing controls

For the geeky amongst you here’s an advantage to using MapRunF rather than MapRun: you can review, amend and re-submit your splits to include controls that didn’t ping for whatever reason. On the grounds that many folk are self-timing and will be running straight through the control sites rather than waiting for a ping, I’m happy to trust MapRunners to do this yourselves too and adjust after. It’s all a lowkey, fun way to get us back into the swing of things after all.

Want to geek? Here’s how using the “Hey, I think the GPS missed one” (HITMO) function:

1. Reload last night’s event if necessary (no PIN required now – they expire at 23:00 on the day of the event)
2. Select “Show Results” at the bottom and then last night’s event from the top of the list.
3. When you see your trace on the screen, select the menu button top right and then “Review Results (HITMO)”
4. Tap the info button top right for instructions how to locate and select missing controls. The same instructions can also be found here.
5. Tap “Submit a Revised Result” at the bottom.

You can’t edit times though so what I suggest in future is if you visit a control and after a few seconds still no ping and you’re certain you’re in the right place then move on and HITMO at the end if necessary. And I promise to be more careful plotting the remaining courses for this year’s Urban Sprints series.

Rachel

Cove Urban Sprint

It was great to see so many old friends again tonight, tempted out for a run despite the weather threatening to dump on us big time.

Thanks for being game guineapigs and joining the MapRun Tribe. A few lessons learned, not least that I need a new pair of glasses having plotted no. 8 in the wrong place – please accept my apologies for that. We’ll see if we can make some adjustments to the manual set of results tomorrow to compensate those of you who were affected.

It seems that responsiveness varies quite widely from phone to phone. I found myself having to loiter for several seconds at some controls waiting for the next satellite to come round but it did give me time to get my breath back and plan ahead.

The most weird thing reported, by Phil, was having an icecream van drive by drowning out the sound of his phone beeping.

MapRun was the original app which gave you the experience you had tonight but required an administrator to upload courses. Then came MapRunF which also has some natty features allowing you to set your own courses or check control positions all by phone. And now there’s MapRunG for Garmin watches which Sam Griffin was trialling tonight. We’ll let you know whether it gets the thumbs up.

Danestone next week. Look out for an email from David Kirk with details and email address to pre-enter. Thanks for your patience waiting for your allocated start time or quietly slotting yourselves into a gap if you spotted it. Remember it’s all about maintaining 2m distancing between ‘strangers’ so don’t blow it by crowding round phone screens afterwards! (Didn’t think that one through when I suggested using MapRun.) As orienteers you’ll be wanting a scale so…
2m = 6.666667 orienteering kites side by side.

Urban Sprint Cove 2nd Sept Results

Results
MapRun results/RouteGadget

I’ve tried to adjust the times for those who were affected by number 8 being in the wrong position by looking at the traces on RouteGadget to see who obviously spent minutes wandering back and forth. Later starters were tipped off and self-timers would have been blissfully unaware anyway so rather than try voiding the legs (too much maths) I did some pseudo-analysis and adjustments for half a dozen of you.
(Before emailing me to complain about this favoritism, the others might want to check that they bagged number 15 the proper way i.e. by running right round into that group of houses and not just fortuitously picking it up from the grassy patch on the west side of the fence.)

You’ll notice that Sam’s time remains unadjusted as he didn’t wait that long before deciding to carry on regardless. I’ve since sussed out how you can do the same and then adjust your results control list using the HITMO function after you finish. See this post on how to do that using MapRunF (the original MapRun app doesn’t have this function but if you used it last night I think you should still be able to use MapRunF to adjust.)
On the grounds that we’re trusting self-timers to “visit” controls we’ll allow this for future Urban Sprints this year but will check your trace looks like you did actually go to the right area as shown on the map.

We had one or two folk finish but didn’t come back to Registration to report in. As we’re not downloading we need you to do that please so we can tick you off as back safe and sound.

Temporary O Courses (TOCs)

Sorry folks – nothing out at the moment as we’ve restarted proper events but if things take a turn for the worse and we’re locked down again then worth a quick squizz at the website again.

Glen Dye 19/8/20 CANCELLED

Glen Dye has also fallen into the same trap as Crathes & Tollohill unfortunately: area OK but planner and equipment in Lockdown in ABZ DOH!

But we’re using the time to think ahead to the Urban Sprint Series due to start Wed 2nd Sept and crossing everything that ABZ will be given the all clear by then.
Just in case of further disruptions though we’re planning a wee experiment this year (everything’s so topsy-turvy anyway!) and hope to use the MapRun app for timing but will still provide paper maps for all if required and the option to self-time for those who prefer. We’ll still need you to pre-register and allocate start times to comply with BOF/SOA Covid precautions same as we were going to do for the Summer Series.

More details to follow soon.

Crathes event 5/8/20 CANCELLED

As the local Aberdeen Lockdown has just been implemented and the Planner and many competitors live in the City and can’t now travel that far we’ve had to cancel the event at Crathes tonight.
We may be able to rearrange it for later in the year so watch this space for news on both Crathes and our other Summer event at Tollohill that may also be affected.