Forth Valley Orienteers

Junior Home Internationals

The Junior Home Internationals took place Sat/Sun 23rd/24th Sept near Stirling - with the Individual competition being held on Saturday at Dumyat, and the Relays on Sunday at Polmaise.

England took the trophies as overall winners, and as winners of the Individual competition on Saturday.

Scotland took the trophy for being the Relay winners on Sunday.

Wales beat Ireland to take home the Judith Wingham trophy

Detailed Results

Overall	Boys	Girls	Overall
England	73	52	125 - Trophy
Scotland	47	65	112
Wales	21	47	68 - Judith Wingham
Ireland	39	16	55

Individual	Boys	Girls	Overall
England	43	34	77 - Trophy
Scotland	25	35	60
Wales	15	29	44
Ireland	25	10	35

Relay	Boys	Girls	Overall
Scotland	22	30	52 - Trophy
England	30	18	48
Wales	6	18	24
Ireland	14	6	20

The days

From a slightly parochial perspective (based on our local press release)....

Strong performances from the Scottish girls in the Junior Home International Orienteering Championships at the weekend led the team to overall victory in the Relay Championships, and a close second place in the overall results.

Ninety six enthusiatic youngsters representing Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales took part in two days of competition hosted by Forth Valley Orienteers.

On Saturday, the individual competion took place on the open moorland of Dumyat. In a fortunate gap in the weather between the downpours of Friday night, and the incessant rain of Sunday - the Scottish girls shone. Their results put them in first place. FVO club member Jamie Stevenson had an excellent performance coming in fourth in the M14 class. But, good results from the English boys gave England the individual trophy.

Sunday's relays were held in Polmaise woods. Again the girls anchored the Scottish team, winning first, second and third place in the Relays. FVO members Abi and Victoria Longhurst were both part of the Scottish team that came second. With the boys teams coming home in third and fourth place, this was enough to give Scotland overall victory in the Relays. However, England's lead from the Individual competition on Sunday was still enough to leave them as overall winners. Final results England - 125 points, Scotland - 112 points, Wales - 68 points and Ireland - 55 points.

Relay Planner's Report

I was delighted to be asked to plan on the new area Polmaise after training in the woods since 1991. I was surprised at how much rhododendron was on the map – though we used it to provide route choice legs and variation. I hope no one got caught up in it too badly.

It was challenging to incorporate conventional gaffling with 3 different length courses. In the end, we compromised on courses that were split into thirds with the extra distances in a common middle third. This meant the first third and last third could be gaffled to reduce following. I was sorry to see an England men’s team getting caught out and punching the wrong first control (ok the codes were one digit different but can’t mix up a pit and a thicket).

A number of competitors were caught out by additional unmarked indistinct paths – sorry, we made many updates to the map but did not catch all the changes – this will happen on World Cups etc so you need to develop your map reading skills to rely on multiple techniques simultaneously eg compass, contours and paths – so you don’t have to slow down too much when things suddenly don’t appear to fit.

It was great to the see such close competition with positions changing at the top throughout the relay. Exciting for all to watch. Finally, I was pleased to read Nopesport reporting the courses as technically challenging on my own training wood! What more can a planner ask for.

Individual Day Planner's Report

Firstly, thanks must go to Will Hensman who helped put out the controls on a very wet night and an early morning. The weather on the day makes the event. On Dumyat the weather can be either wet / windy or brilliant sunshine, fortunately we got the latter. The finish are was selected to produce the ample theatre atmosphere where runners can be clearly seen for a few minutes before they finish, which I hoped added to the event.

Dumyat has been used twice for badge events in the last 4yrs, with a similar format, start on the moor and finish in the University at the foot of the hill, I wanted to plan something different - start and finish on the moor with runners not visiting the start / assembly before they run. The M16 / 18 and W16 / 18 winning times were generally within +/- 2 mins (faster times were potentially due to the exceptionally dry summer and the very dry marshes). The 14's courses were both too short (sorry), on later investigation previous 14's courses did not use the moor but were within the forested area of the map, hence the shorter historical courses. However looking through the 14's times / splits several of the 14's are very fast !! and the times were close making the race more interesting.

Thanks must go to Louise Longhurst (organiser) and Rob Hickling (controller) for there professional and relaxed attitude to the event.

Thanks

Thanks to our officials, helpers, landowners and the enthusiastic juniors and their team management who all made the two days worthwhile, including

Organiser:- Louise Longhurst
Individual Planner:- Fraser Purves
Individual Controller:- Rob Hickling (GRAMP)
Relay Planner:- Steve Nicholson
Relay Controller:- Blair Young (Tinto)
SI gurus team leader:- Jon Cross
Sport Ident Gurus:- Jon Marsden and Robin Strain
Photos - Steve Nicholson, David Nicol, Louise & Gary Longhurst and Nigel Benham
Routegadget - Jarkko Ryyppö for the application, and fixing up the files

Routegadget

This is one of our favourite toys. Do put your routes in to share with your fellow competitors.

Note

All seems to be working now. Special thanks to Jarkko Ryyppö [the author] who also took the trouble to fix up the files that got corrupted after we had trouble with the csv files used for splits on Sunday

How To View

The Gadget is quite intuitive and easy to use. It also has its own set of instructions. Here's a short summary to give you a quick start:

First you need to select an event. Why not try the JHI!
To view a race animation, you need to "Choose class/course".
You can move the map around by pressing and holding down the left mouse button somewhere on the map while moving the mouse in the desired direction. Now, locate the start triangle.
Next, "Choose competitors" whose routes you would like to view. Select everyone (max. 10) who has drawn their route.
To start the animation, press "View animation" button, select "Mass start" option (on by default), and press the "Start" button. Small squares representing the different competitors should start from the triangle.
During the animation you can move and zoom the map. You can also increase/decrease the animation speed with "Speed+/Speed-" buttons.
You can also view the competitors' routes, splits, and comments

How to Draw

Drawing your own routes is equally easy. Simply follow the instructions at the bottom of the Gadget page. Here's some additional suggestions:

The Gadget spreads your time out evenly along the route that you draw for each leg. This may not be accurate, particularly if you had trouble with any part of the leg. If you wandered around in some location make sure to include a lot of fine detail in your drawing, even if you don't know exactly where you were. This will appear to slow the animation in that area (and not on the part of the leg where you did well). You can also artificially introduce a pause, if, for example, you stood for a minute relocating. You can show this by creating a small tick mark across your route and oscillated back and forth in place on the tick mark for awhile when you are drawing the route. Then the animation will also appear to pause at the same location.
In some cases the routes will speak for themselves, but there is also a comment field for you to use. You can write to the comment field when you think of things while you are drawing your route. This can be particularly helpful for beginners looking at the animations and wondering what was going on. Was the route planned or accidental? If it was planned, what was the thinking? Make sure to include the leg number in the comment since the comment is associated with the entire course. For example:
- 1-2: Aimed for the fence corner to use it as an attack point.
- 4-5: Accidentally drifted much lower than planned. Saw the road and turned.
- 5-6: The undergrowth seemed much slower than mapped. So I switched to the stream bed for a faster route.
- 9-10: Was planning to use the trail bend to attack, but found the boulder and used that instead.