Autumn is always a busy time for DVO, with our AGM and Club Championships on 9 and 19 October. We hope you can make one or both of these – the Club Champs is great fun! Everyone is given a handicap by a boffin in Tansley, calculated so that we all finish around noon. The Allestree Evergreen Hall is booked for a bring-and-share picnic afterwards. You can enter here, by 27 September please (our handicapper is going on holiday).
The Championships are at Allestree Park, planned by Michelle Mackervoy, course lengths as follows:
Short 2km
Medium 4km
Long course 6km
Could you be the winner of one of these historic trophies?
At the picnic, we’ll also present Club awards (see 2023 recipients here):
- Orienteer of the Year
- Most Enthusiastic Newcomer
- Junior Orienteer of the Year
- Most Improved Orienteer of the Year
- Sports Personality of the Year
- David Parkin Trophy for Outstanding Services to the Club
Bluey Visits Sweden: a teaser for our AGM
What must be a record number of Club members went – by 2 wheels or 4 – to the Swedish O-ringen in July. Bluey travelled in Ann-Marie’s car. Here he is, up bright and early before the hoards of orienteers trample this lovely green field. You can hear more about the trip at our AGM on October 9th at 7:30pm at Church in the Peak in Matlock, where John Duckworth, Helen Chiswell and others will present a talk.
Other Diary Dates
EMOA Event Officials Training Day, Saturday 12th October at Groby Community College, Leicester. Workshops on planning, organising, controlling and mapping.
Orienteering Foundation Coaching Day, Saturday 23rd November Colonel’s Drive, Graythwaite, Windermere, followed by a Regional event on Bethecar Moor on the Sunday.
Please let Nicky know if you’re interested in attending either of these events.
News from Scotland
Jane our Chair received the following ‘thank you’ email from Mike & Liz up in Callander, and forwarded it to Newstrack:
Just spent the DVO voucher on 3 mature apple trees at a local garden centre en-route from the Clyde event at Balloch. So excellent result thanks.
Now need to plant them on the slope we have created in the back garden by having the fence rebuilt at the top of the embankment behind, like both our neighbours, instead of at the bottom (which also meant people walking past on the old railway could look in to the house).
Look out for Mike and Liz at the Nottingham City Race on October 6th.
A Summer of Urbans – Derek Gale reports on recent mis-haps
I will be glad when this summer is over as I seem to be turning into Graham [GJ calls his lawyer. Wait, he is a lawyer – Ed.]. With exception of Allestree I have not run in the forest since the British Championships in April, and that was spectacularly unsuccessful. You may be wondering why I referred to Graham but as the year of urbans has gone on I seem to have become more and more accident prone. There is a competition called City Race European Tour (CRET) which combines 9 urban events across Europe. With 3 of them in the UK, it seemed ideal to have a go at getting a good position in the league, having won it in 2019. It used to be the best 4 events that counted though this year it seems to have moved to 5. So the plan was Glasgow, Salford Quays, London and then Esztergom in Hungary. Only four so I was considering Faro in December but then we get back to Graham.
Running round Salford Quays I managed to find a lamppost in my way which left me with a large lump on my head and some blood dripping down. I finished the course though. Which brings me to the London City Race. All the events in the CRET combine several events over the weekend so the London City Race had an evening race around Burgess Park. There I was happily running between control 2 and 3 when I found myself on the floor clutching my leg. I had become a new way for an electric bike to stop! Jen was on the same course and appeared a few minutes later just as I was getting back on my feet. We walked together for a few more controls until we noticed my leg had swollen to twice its size so we called it a day. Further evidence emerged as it became obvious that the wheel had hit my leg and the handlebars hit my back, picture below for the non-squeamish. It was obvious that my London City Race was not going to happen. So I am not going to make the five runs in CRET and I am concerned that the trend is for even more dramatic events, hence the reference to Graham (sorry Graham). It might be a while before you see me running again.
Simon’s epic in Worcester
We haven’t had many nominations for “Sports Personality of the Month” recently in Newstrack, but here’s a good one (be careful what you post in the DVO WhatsApp Group!!).
The Group is a great way to keep in touch, especially for those not on Facebook. If you’d like to join, please email Sally Calland.
London City Races – reported on by Sal
Three Chaffeys as well as a Buxton also ran in Burgess Park, a fun and varied sprint. Starts between 5 and 7pm on the Friday evening meant that the low sun didn’t help visibility.
Saturday was the City Race itself, this year returning to the Barbican, now mapped at 1:4000 making use of the new symbols for different levels and the “dragon’s teeth” for tunnel entrances. It was still fiendishly difficult, and beset with some controversy – which explains why everyone’s times were reduced.
Sunday’s races were organised by our daughter Sarah’s club LOK – an ultra sprint in Highgate’s Waterlow Park. Dave sat this one out, opting instead to visit Karl Marx’s grave. If “ultra sprint” sounds like a contradiction in terms like a square circle or a married bachelor, it just means extra-short sprint. However, there were four of them! We each had three Heats – ABC or XYZ – and the top 4 went into the Class Final. Each heat was around 1km and took me between 10 and 15 mins. Some had as many as 30 controls!
To avoid congestion on the 1:1250 map, no Control Descriptions were given and the magenta dot in the middle of the circle was used to show the exact position of the kite. For instance, at Control 1, there were actually 4 kites at different sides of the tree. Sarah’s been orienteering at park and urban races for about 3 years and she was worried she might mis-punch as she never uses a compass. But her thumb compass came into its own here, as she accurately found 115 controls without a mis-punch!
We had a 90 minute window in which to run the Heats, then went for a coffee before the Finals. During the pause, they made some changes to the Maze to blow our minds even more. Kim, Sarah and I were in the “also-rans” Final, but it was great fun – mentally tiring as well as physical. After the first race, I thought “I won’t need a shower this evening” but then by the time I was half way through the second race, I was covered in sweat :/
Rob Lines’ photos of Saturday’s race at the Barbican are here.
Newstrack reaches a new audience
This humble rag is not only read by orienteers, it seems! I was recently contacted by the Intellectual Property Manager of a major UK firm:
Naturally I apologised and redacted the offending article featuring the Bilbao City Race, by Jane our Chair! I wonder how many other O-club journals heard from this lady?
Puzzle Page by David Vincent
The Maze Craze
Well done to Chris Millard, Graham Johnson, and John Hurley for correct answers to the last puzzle. The weights of the running shoes were 240, 255, and 340 grams. Special mention, though to John, who found that solution, but also a different – arguably better – solution. Moving along…
The organiser for this year’s summer picnic outing has a bit of a thing about mazes. That’s all very well as an extra activity at O events, but many members were a little surprised to find that, rather than be told the location of the picnic, each member was assigned to one of four teams and given a start location indicated by a digit in a grid:
Their task was then to determine the picnic location according to the following rules:
- The team must make the number of straight lines indicated by their starting square;
- the lines may travel through any number of squares;
- they must only travel in a north, east, south, or west direction – no diagonals;
- they must not cross or join the paths of any of the teams, nor go backwards on their own.
Can you deduce the square in which the organiser was waiting with the food and chilled wine?
The next Newstrack will appear in early December, so please send your answers to David by 31 November.
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Finally, the poster for our next 3 events. If anyone is able to display one, I’ll bring them to Calke. I’m going for the Orwellian approach this time; “a picture is worth a thousand words.”
