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Summer Series starts this week! Hazlehead Wed 23rd

Registration / Meeting point is by the Gramp banner in the car park near the east end of the playpark/garden area. NJ896055. Streetmap link.

4 courses

Short: 1.1km
Medium: 2.5km
Short Tech: 3.7km
Long Tech: 4.7km

The short course is entirely within the gardens area.
The medium and short tech courses use the gardens and area to the north, towards the crematorium (but not inside it!).
And the long tech (get what they deserve) go south of the playing fields into the wooded area closer to Countesswells road.

Don’t forget it’s World Orienteering Day too and we’re trying to break last year’s record for the most people orienteering at one time (although the rules have been bent a bit so taht it lasts all week. Referee!!) So see you there and bring a friend or two.

Forest Sprint overall results after 5 events

Here is the overall league table for the Forest Sprint Series after 5 events.  Positions are based on best 4 out of 6 events.  One more event to go: Bellwood, Aboyne, this Wednesday.  Still a lot of scope for positions to change.

FSS Results 2018_Post 5 Events

Forest Sprint @ Mulloch 9/5/18

Many thanks to all those who made it to Mulloch tonight, especially considering the not-quite-perfect weather conditions. Thanks also to Gareth, Bob and Zoe for help control collecting.

Results

Well done to those who recognised the photo locations, may be we should put on some photo-O too!

Note on forest rides. Mapped rides are the wider gaps through the mature trees and may be obscured at ground level by younger tree growth – look up! There are old and new extraction lanes running parallel to the mapped rides that are may look like rides, can be good route choices but are not shown on the map. Some examples below. I hope this helps.

Mapped ride (bit soggy underfoot)

Recent extraction lane

Mapped ride with younger trees. Crossed in foreground by recent extraction lane.

Mapped ride

Extraction lane

Forest Sprints start at Foggieton on 11th April

The first of the Forest Sprint Series will be at Foggieton, Wednesday 11th April.  Car parking and registration at Cults Primary School.  Registtration 18.00 – 18.50, will probably be ready a bit earlier.

One course which should be suitable for everyone, 2.7 km, TD3 (ish).  No road crossings.  The forest is nice and runnable at this time of year; most of the undergrowth flattened after the winter, and no nettles!

Relay Teams for British and Scottish Relay Championships

British Relay Championships @ Torphantrick 20th May
The British Relay Championships are being held on the 20th May up at Torphantrick up in Royal Deeside. It is probably one of the most runnable areas in Deeside, and should be a cracking venue for the Relays. If any Gramp member wishes to run at the relays, please let David Esson know asap. Closing date for entries is 4th May but he’ll do the team entries so all you need to do is email him asap with your name, age class, whether you prefer a long or short leg and TD5 or lower.
Doesn’t matter if you are competitive or not, if you fancy it, put your name down for it!

The various Relay courses are the following:

Men’s Premier (20-35)
Women’s Premier (20-35)
M14, W14, M18, W18
M40, W40, M50, W50, M60, W60, M/W70

Mixed Adhoc, Junior Adhoc, Mini Relay

So you can see there is a wide range of courses to suit everyone and if we don’t have enough takers for an age class team then we’ll mix and match you into an adhoc as competitive or fun as you want. Best bit is that the Club pays, so really you get a free run in an awesome area, if you fancy it!

Scottish Relay Championships @Roseisle 27th May

Having had a practice run at Torphantrick, the Scottish Relays are the next week up at Roseisle beside Burghead. Think Balmedie/Forvie but with trees so if Torphantrick is going to be fun, then Roseisle is going to be phenomenal! More details on the relay categories to follow and closing date for this is 13th May.

Let David know if you are interested in running here too! david.esson

(All Gramp members should have already received an email with this info – if you didn’t then it’s time to check we have your email address up to date so please email webmaster to confirm.)

New club kit running tights

In a bid to move away from the red and the castle, which some folk have said they don’t like that much, we’ve been mulling over alternative themes still connected to the Aberdeen coat of arms or other symbols and can now proudly unveil the new club running tights:

• made from ultra industrial rip-stop lycra blended with typhoon proof kevlar for maximum protection
• impregnated with a proven anti-tick chemical based on leopard poo
• guaranteed to incapacitate your rivals with incredulous laughter

We’re looking for volunteers to give these a whirl at the upcoming British and Scottish Champs. Interested?
Email fashionvictim@grampoc.com with your size and we’ll do the rest.

World Sprint Orienteering Championships 2022

Exciting news on the SOA website yesterday confirming that The Scottish Orienteering 6-Day Event Company, along with the bid partners of the Scottish Orienteering Association, EventScotland and the City of Edinburgh Council are submitting a bid on behalf of British Orienteering to stage the World Sprint Orienteering Championships 2022.
Along with the announcement is a map showing 5 embargoed urban sprint areas in and around Edinburgh.

Let’s hope they get it as although it will mean a lot of hard work the buzz from being involved in something as big as this is tremendous and the spin off publicity is great for attracting newcomers – STV and The Adventure Show are bound to film it if nothing else.

Introduction to Orienteering Hazlehead – 3 sessions 14th & 28th April and 12th May

Click here for more details and registration form.

Mountain bike centre at Durris

Bit quiet on the orienteering front until the Forest Sprints start (more details on those to follow very soon) so in the meantime here’s something that might interest those energetic crossover athletes amongst you.

The North East Trail Centre Organisation have unveiled plans for a new centre for mountain biking in Durris (Cairn Mon Earn at the summit of the Slug Road)  with a chairlift, ski slope, cafe etc etc and also ideas for nordic skiing trails and other activities like “orienteering”. Mountain bike orienteering maybe? as mooted at our AGM?

Take a moment to tell them your thoughts and ideas by completing their survey – open until March 15th.  Click here.  (It’s a bit of a monster link so might not work – if so go visit the NETCO Facebook where you’ll find the original link and see what they’re all about.)

Bennachie under threat?

Some of you will be aware of ongoing discussions/plans for the dualling of the A96 from Aberdeen to Elgin and that some of the alternative routes under consideration would encroach upon Bennachie and its surroundings. From a purely selfish orienteering point of view, or from a wider ranging appreciation of the other benefits that Bennachie offers, you might like to take a look at the Save Bennachie Campaign website. Although lately the area around the Bennachie Centre has been thinned and felled quite a bit so we’re not really able to use it at the moment it’s still worth hanging onto for the long term as it’s a good bridge between us and MORland to the north and a great place to attract newcomers to the sport.

SOA wants to tap into your thoughts about orienteering in Scotland

The SOA are reviewing if they’re really focusing on the right things to achieve their aims, and if/what they should be doing differently.
Richard Oxlade and Anne Hickling are leading on this as the ‘strategic’ team. There is an online survey with a deadline of 28th February so please take a look and respond to help direct the SOA over the next few years. The survey is short and sweet and is really designed to get you all thinking and talking about how GRAMP and SOA can work together to develop membership, performance, club activities. As the old adage goes: if you don’t ask, you don’t get, so wax lyrical and help Richard and Anne on their mission to help us.

Richard will feed back the results at a workshop in April in order to generate actions, to which you are also invited. More details here.

Compass Sport Cup – 11th March

And now for something completely different…

Here’s the map from EUOC’s Big Weekend Indoor O laid on by Prof Graeme Ackland of INT in “his” offices (JCMB Building in Uni Kings Campus).

Indoor O map – EUOC Big Weekend 2018

The staircases are all given letters so you can spot where they come out on successive floors, green lines across corridors are fire doors you can open and go through, black lines are locked doors or walls. What’s not mapped is a handful of earnest scientists who were working late on a Friday evening for some reason trying to dodge flying orienteers and ignore the thundering feet outside their offices.
Nor is the treacherous ice on the roof on level 9 mapped but at least there were handrails along the parapet to hang onto. (Risk assessment? Yep – risky but let’s go for it!)

If you’re intrigued by this, try Googling the Stockholm Indoor Cup – a much grander affair across sprawling school complexes including darkened cinemas with video loops, mini maze sections made out of desks, disco lights and music and a chicken run past spectators while trying to get your head around the latest up, down, there, back… takes Indoor O to a whole new level (geddit?)

Gramp website stats

I know how some of you nerdy folk out there just love graphs and stats so here’s a quick selection from the GRAMP website back end stats facility that illustrate one or two interesting things:

The 2012 spike was due to Scottish Relay Champs traffic for that year as we organised it at Craig Coinnich. Otherwise it does look like traffic is falling off slightly – could be due to more folk checking our Facebook page in preference? Or maybe we’re slacking in spreading the word about our wonderful sport? Sarah Wallace has taken over as publicity/social media guru so have a chat with her if you think you can help in that regard.

Most popular posts for 2017 include some obvious ones like Summer / Forest / Autumn Sprint Series and the Forvie SOL pages but look what’s at number 4…. Permanent Orienteering Courses.

Can you help Stuart Anderson with setting up/maintaining a POC local to you? How about getting out that flashy new smart phone you got for Christmas and setting up some Mobo courses?
And once that’s all set up and running, leave some intriguing QR codes dotted about to lure folk to take a look?

Finally, here’s a world map showing where someone or something looking at our website supposedly comes from. Bear in mind that a lot of these “views” will be bots rather than actual people in Laos or Bangladesh or other unlikely areas wanting to find out about our next event but it looks pretty impressive, doesn’t it? We can always dream.

Have you renewed your membership yet?

From 1st November this year, the SOA introduced an additional membership option, to give existing and new members the option of joining their local club and the SOA only.
There are therefore two options for membership renewal:

1. British membership (joining your local club, the SOA and British Orienteering)

• The primary option for members who participate competitively and hence enter Scottish/UK events, and who wish to take on official and coaching roles
• You can renew your membership as normal by logging on to the British Orienteering website.

2. Scottish membership (joining your local club and the SOA)

• Additional option, for people who primarily orienteer locally and who don’t take part in competitions across Scotland or the UK. There are some limitations on event entry and taking on official and coaching roles but we can mentor you which will cover the paperwork aspect and still allow you to get involved helping put on the local events you enjoy so much.
• You can join as a Scottish member online.

For more information and to understand the differences between British and Scottish membership, click here. To explain why SOA introduced the option, read more here.

Whichever option you choose Gramp look forward to seeing you all plus friends and families again next year starting with the Hogmany Hangover Handicap at Tyrebagger on 2nd January.

Sasha’s in the GBR Senior Squad for 2018

British Orienteering has announced the GBR Senior Squad for 2018, and there are a good number of Scottish and Scotland-based athletes included in the squad not least ex-Gramp Sasha Chepelin. Congratulations!
(And next year I promise to try and keep better tabs on his international apearances and results as this year it was all al bit under the radar. Any Gramps out there who spot things like this or any other Gramps’ achievements that deserve to be trumpeted then don’t be afraid to send me an email reminder. Rachel)

Crathes DNC – 6th Dec 2017 – Results

A dry and mild evening for night-O at Crathes  (Thankfully before Storm Caroline arrives).

Thanks to Jack G for very pleasant, runnable and enjoyable courses.  Getting to the Start was a bit more challenging than usual, as there were no reflectors to show the way, and no start description either!   I think everyone found it easily enough, though  🙂

Here are results and split times.

Routegadget is loaded up.  Enter your routes there, and add your comments on to the DNC blog.

See you next week (13th) at Carlogie Wood.  Bring your winter woollies …

Scottish Score Championships 2017

A good day for Gramp today. Congratulations to these guys who swept ~20% of the podium places between them:

Champions
M21 Jack Gomersall
M40 Pete Lawrence
M55 Sam Gomersall
M60 Bob Daly
W50 Carolyn McLeod

Plenty of 2nd places too – W60 Oonagh Grassie, M60 Rob Hickling, M14 Sam Griffin, M35 David Esson (robbed by a MOR ringer but Pete redressed the balance there!) – and Tim Griffin was 3rd M50 with a bit of judicious scrambling.

MOR hosted this year’s Score Champs at Quarrelwood near Elgin, an intriguing little area with 6 or 7 extremely complex patches in and around old quarries interspersed with open almost featureless (in comparison) stretches.

No big value controls but rather a fairly even sprinkling of 10s and 20s which made for quite a dither for most trying to decide which clusters to target first – out west weaving up and down the hillside to hoover up the ‘interesting’ ones close by first or up onto the fast running at the top to warm up legs and brain first and hope you have enough steam to tackle the slope at the end?

Scolty results on BOF site now

Got there in the end:   BOF results and points

Ex-GRAMP virtually in the Guardian

Not to do with orienteering so even more of a double-take when I read Mark Mon-Williams’ name in this article.

Wonder if he’s tried using junior orienteers for his study as their eyesight and balance must be better than the average?

Gramp Equipment Store – Road Closure 25-30th Sept

Access by car to the Gramp Equipment Shed in Macaulay Drive is going to be severely limited in late September.

Countesswells Road is being re-surfaced, and will be completely closed to traffic between Airyhall traffic lights and the junction with Airyhall Avenue whilst this work is taking place.  Macaulay Drive residents will have no vehicle access for a week!

The road closure will commence at 05:30 on Monday 25th September, and will last until 22:00 on Saturday 30th September … or possibly longer if bad weather delays completion of the roadworks.

During that period, the closest vehicle approach to the Equipment Shed will be from Craigiebuckler Drive.

Equipment will have to be carried about 200 metres between the shed and the car.

Please take note, and plan your equipment pick-ups and drop-offs appropriately!

Orienteers win races in the presence of royalty

At the 202nd Braemar Gathering last Saturday, the long distance races had great showings from orienteers:

– Hill Race (Ladies) – 1st Naomi Lang (GRAMP), 2nd Tessa Hill (EUOC)
– Hill Race (Open) – 1st Peter Hodkinson (NOC), 2nd Graham Gristwood (FVO), 3rd Sasha Chepelin (EUOC), 5th Alex Carcas (EUOC)
– Hill Race (Ladies Veterans) – 3rd Marianne Lang (GRAMP)
– Two Mile Handicap (Open) – 1st Alex Carcas (EUOC)

Her Majesty the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh were present, along with the Prince of Wales and the Princess Royal.

Congratulations to the race winners … who are clear evidence that orienteers are just as fit as the specialist hillrunners!

Glen Dye 5/7/2017

Lovely evening for some blaeberry picking … and orienteering too. Many thanks to the Caffyns for entertaining us all.

Results

Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair

Next Saturday’s Moravian event at Culbin will be 50 years to the day since British Orienteering was formed. They’ll be celebrating by having an informal 1960s theme to the event.

While the orienteering will be very much 21st century, they are inviting participants to dig out their most ancient o kit, or failing that come with some kind of 1960s theme, be it your flower power Beetle or your best Jimi Hendrix lookalike gear.

Of course, fancy dress is very much optional. They would simply welcome anyone with a passion for orienteering to help celebrate – especially anyone who was around in the sport in the 1960s.

So, if you’re going to Culbin on Saturday…….

Tyrebagger results uploaded to BOF

It was a bit of a tag team event in terms of admin and officials but we’ve finally managed to get the right combo in Aberdeen this weekend to upload the results to BOF for the rankings. Sadly only the Brown course had sufficient qualifying finishers so only they get any points.

For newcomers: the BOF rankings scheme gives you the chance to compare yourself with runners from all over the country. You need 10 BOF members finishing a course successfully in order for points to be awarded and it’s only TD5 (Green course and above) and Seniors that are included.

Your best 6 results in the past 12 months get added together to give the overall ranking points. Gramp’s top ten rankers currently look like this:

The figure in brackets shows how these guys are currently ranked in the whole of BOF plus whether they’ve gone up or down a few places since last week. There are also filters by age class as well if you want to play around on the BOF rankings page.

Hmmmm…. all men. Come on girls! We need to get running more counting events/faster/more accurate!

Naomi Lang selected for Commonwealth Youth Games

Woohoo! Naomi will be running 3000m for Team Scotland at the CYG somewhere considerably hotter and sunnier than NE Scotland. Huge congrats from all Gramps and we’ll be glued to the track and field sports news late July.

http://www.scottishathletics.org.uk/bahamas-bound-11-athletes-picked-cyg/

Forest Sprints 2017 final scores

Its taken a few days but here are the final overall scores after the 2017 Forest Sprint series. Let Sam know if you see any big mistakes!
end

2017Forest_SprintSeries final.pdf

WANTED: Fit males to help heart research project

Dr Alice Mezincescu has started coming to our events (when on call duties allow) in order to brush up her navigation skills for an Ultra race later this year she says, but I reckon that secretly she’s also been gauging the orienteering fraternity for suitable subjects to help her research.

She is a British Heart Foundation Research Fellow working for the Medical Sciences Department of Aberdeen University and currently trying to recruit fit males who exercise on regular basis for one of their studies that aims to elucidate how we can reduce cardiovascular risk improve insulin sensitivity with the aid of exercise.

Jon Musgrave has already been through the guinea pig process so if you want to know more catch him at Dess or contact the Cardiology Research Facility on 01224 559573 or email alice.mezincescu@abdn.ac.uk.