Forth Valley Orienteers

Dunblane East - Stirling City RaceSun 3 Nov

Scottish Orienteering Urban League

The Scottish Orienteering Urban League (SOUL) focuses on urban racing in Scottish cities and towns. Events are frequently held in parks, urban areas, or close to urban centres. See Scottish Orienteering Urban League (SOUL) webpage for more information.

UK Urban League

A UK-wide programme of high-quality urban orienteering races. See UK Urban League website for more information.

Regional event

Local events are competitive but low key and in the 'localised' area, often on a Wednesday evening or a weekend morning. Try O events are local events tailored to anyone new to the sport, with coaches on hand for advice and tips. Open to all ages, abilities and fitness levels, learn to use a map and compass to navigate round short courses.

Training events are non-competitive and used for training and coaching. These are aimed at members of the club, but non-members and newcomers are also welcome. Social events are non-orienteering activities, with the annual highlight being our Awards Evening and ceilidh!

Regional events attract participants from around the local region, National events are high quality competitions that will attract people from far away, and Major events are large competitions such as a British Championships or the JK.

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Last updated: Sun 03 November, 2024

Terrain: Urban & Parkland

Results

Si Results

Winsplits

Routegadget

SOUL League

UK Urban League

BOF Rankings

Officials' Reports

Organiser comments

Thanks to everyone for coming to Dunblane for our urban race today – we hope you enjoyed the courses.

We had a bit of an issue on courses 3,4 and 5 as a gate which is generally closed (and marked as an uncrossable boundary) was opened during the competition - we think by a local resident. We later posted a marshal to the site. Whilst we initially disqualified those who confessed to using the gate, following some protests about the fact that the early starters who found the gate locked, and late starters who saw the marshal, were able to amend their route and avoid disqualification. This introduced an element of unfairness and we decided that the best solution was to remove the affected leg from these three courses. We recognise that some competitors may not agree with this decision but hope you can understand the rationale. 

One other issue arose in relation to the out of bounds area and footpath to the SW of the cathedral, where the path was out of bounds for runners, but used as the route for finishers returning to the event centre. The path had been marked as out of bounds as it was completely inaccessible due to utility works in the few weeks prior to the event. However, when this was re-opened after map printing, we decided to use it as a signposted walking route from the finish. We consider that the out of bounds status was clear on the map and we are disappointed that at least one competitor chose to argue with our marshal who was charged with preventing use of the path by competitors. Please note that it is unacceptable to abuse marshals who are volunteering to help the event run smoothly! 

Beyond that, everything seemed to go very smoothly and we are grateful to the local residents of Dunblane who were very tolerant and welcoming of our event, and the fantastic staff at Braeport who were so helpful and provided a lovely warm space for the event centre and for the fantastic SWAT refreshments. 

Many thanks to all our wonderful FVO helpers, to super-organised planner Neil Polwart (who coped incredibly calmly with all the last minute changes needed due to utility works), and to our controller Jon Cross, who provided lots of useful advice and feedback. And last but certainly not least a huge thanks to Will Hensman and his band of SI helpers who not only quietly handled all the IT on the day but provided both pre- and post- event support.

Planner feedback

I’ve organised big events before (so know the fun Cathy was having - thanks to her for making the planners job easy), but this was a step up for me in planning from Level D events, so was also my first experience of a controller critiquing my courses, asking all the obvious questions I had forgotten; I couldn’t have been luckier having Jon Cross’s input and support.

Every leg needed a purpose, and route choice was on as many of them as possible, but I was also keen to break up people on different courses at both the start and the finish.  The Dunblane map makes offering route choice simple - Condes looks like someone has dropped a bowl of spaghetti on it, with some legs having 4 or 5 fairly reasonable ways to go, and in some cases the best route actually depends on the choice you made on the previous or next leg.  The closing legs weren’t quite a maze but it would be fair to say that there was some inspiration from WOC (and WOC tour) event at Riccarton on keeping concentration going right to the end.  I’m looking forward to seeing where you all actually went on Routegadget.

The junior courses at urban events are always the hardest to work out and I was keen to avoid using the same start location we have used for previous events and simply making the juniors run round Laigh Hills - I wanted them to experience some more urban orienteering - for many that will have been their first time encountering runnable on two levels.  Jon helped me work through that headache and Cathy mustered up the FVO volunteers to Marshall the road issue.

We obviously hit a snag that a locked gate became unlocked during the event.  I was surprised it has caught quite so many out as the lack of valid route seemed clear on the map, but I have the luxury of studying the map for hours.  We had also expected the gate to stay locked, as not only has it been locked every time we’ve been there, I’ve never seen anyone use it!   Cathy’s resolution, seems pragmatic, nobody would have been happy if we had voided the courses.

I had plenty of other headaches in planning as SSE decided to dig up parts of Dunblane; every time we visited in the few weeks before printing the map there was a new problem.  I think we found pragmatic solutions to all of them, and thanks to the SSE guys on the ground for being cooperative for a sport they had never even heard of.   Thanks to the extra Marshalls who got enlisted to manage those areas too.

Huge thanks to the control hangers and collectors especially Jason Inman and Neil Conway who were there when many of you were still in bed to make sure everything was in the right place.

Pre-event Information

Location Info

Near: Dunblane
Lat,Lng: 56.1906,-3.964
Postcode: FK15 0AT
What3Words: ///riper.pines.paler

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