Friday 27 January 2012

British Trail-O Championships 2012 in March on Anglesey

FINALLY!!

British Trail Orienteering Championships 2012 - March 17/18, possibility for training on Fri 16th as well.

Terrain: Newborough forest on the Isle of Anglesey: forested sand dunes (as is Tentsmuir)

Map: 1:5,000 2.5m contours ISOM (same basic spec as Tentsmuir)

Sat: a 2/3 length Trail-O course designed as a model for the following day plus (hopefully, subject to some felling that is going on and is the reason the permissions decision has been delayed) a short course comprising only A flags (or maybe only Z flags ... or maybe some of each!)

Sun: British Trail-Orienteering Championships. Elite class only, all welcome, UK and otherwise)

Note there is a bridge forom mainland Wales to the Isle of Anglesey

Please contact j.kewley@dl.ac.uk for more information

and sorry for the delay for those who have known this was provisionally on for some time now.

JK

Monday 21 November 2011

Irish Trail-O Champs 2011

It's been a while since my last Blog, although I suppose I could have uploaded my CompassSport report from WTOC.

Anyway, this weekend sees a return to Northern Ireland for the Irish Trail-O Champs for the final British Ranking event (and hence selection event) of the 2011 season.

Most of the top British and Irish competitors will be there. Notable exceptions being Irish team members Wilbert Hollinger and Steven Gilmore who are sharing the Planning duties and Clive Allan. Alan Gartside is Organiser so I suspect he won't be competing either.

Ian Ditchfield will be keen to hold on to his top position in the rankings and for either of us to improve our rankings we have to be top Brit (due to the vagaries of our ranking system).

Results, maps, etc will appear here in due course:
http://www.niorienteering.org.uk/lvo/trailo-2011/default.html

STOP PRESS: I have passed the next phase of permissions for a British Trail-O Champs on Newborough (Anglesey) in mid-March. More news shortly on this.

Wednesday 1 June 2011

GB Team named for WTOC

This year's World Trail Orienteering Championships will be held in August alongside the World Orienteering Championships near Aix-le-Bains in Savoie, France.

This year's GB team was named today:

Open class Ian Ditchfield, John Kewley, Dick Keighley.

Paralympic class John Crosby.

Team competition Ian Ditchfield, John Kewley, John Crosby.

Team Finland were announced recently and look a very strong team and as usual, along with Norway are likely to be the strongest rivals for Team Champions Sweden.

JK

Thursday 14 April 2011

Temp-O and Trail-O at the JK

It has now been confirmed on the JK 2011 event website that there will be Temp-O at this year's JK in Northern Ireland. Details of this and the two Trail-O events are included in the Final Details.

This must be one of the most international Trail-O events held in UK/Ireland with entries from GBR, IRL, NOR, SWE, DEN, FIN, CZE, GER, JPN and ESP. Many of these are well known for their exploits at World and European stage so it will tough for the Brits and Irish.

Courses look long at 3.2km and 3.5km (both 21 controls and 2 TCs) which should favour the younger, fitter guys. The combination of courses closing at 18:30 and max times of 159 and 168 mins mean those starting around the 16:30 last start will have to be quick!
My first O event in Lithuania went well: 35:56 for 5.4 - the initial results sheet suggested this was 4:46 mins/km, but the official results had the more accurate 6:39 mins/km. As you can see it was pretty flat with set compass and run hard being the order of the day.


Two interesting notes about the classes on offer. In Lithuania M21 and M35 are the women's courses with V21 and V35 for men. In fact at this event the only Vets class was V35 with A, B, C and D lengths on offer, so I did V45B.

There is another evening event tonight and then 2 more and a Trail-O at the weekend if I can work out the transport.

Tuesday 5 April 2011

Lithuania

Next week I am off to Lithuania for a week's work. Fortunately I have found some Orienteering to do while I am there. All being well I can attend one of the two mid-week events as well as a two day event southwest of Vilnius. Thanks to my Ski-O friend Danielius Pralgauskis for helping me with the entries, travel and accomodation.

Even better than this is that there is also a Trail-O event on the Sunday at the same venue, so I get to do my first Trail-O event since last year's World Championships one week before the JK (whose 2 days comprise 2 of the 4 selection races for this years WTOC).

Sunday 20 March 2011

One blog for now

I had hoped to have separate blogs to keep Ski-O, Trail-O and other O separate. Looks like I'll have to learn a lot more about the technology first.

Due to hassles with misleading information about baggage from KLM I have decided to pack all my clothes in my ski bag.

Monday is Model event, Tuesday is the Sprint where we will have 5 Brits taking part.

JK