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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.