Last weekend James and Laura travelled to Magilligan sanddunes, near Limavady, Co.Derry for the Northern Ireland Orienteering Championships (NIOC) and the Irish Middle Distance championship. Here's a report Laura wrote for us:
The weekend was held in conjunction with the JHIs, an international competition for the junior squads (12-18) from Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales. This clearly seemed to influence the placings of many of the controls which often seemed a bit too glaringly obvious considering both competitions were championship races. Both races took place in Magilligan, a sanddune army base. Saturday was NIOC, an enjoyable race with fast terrain for runners with the exception of green patches which were slow to get through at times. I ran W21S, a 4.5km race and came 2nd and which can be seen below as an example of the map. James ran M21L, a very competitive 8km course, which he finished 9th in a quick time of 54.25. Many DUO Alumni members were present and had good runs such as Ruairi Short (7th in M21L), Regina Kelly (9th in W21L), past President of DUO Andrew Butterfield (10th in M50L), current President Ruth Lynam (8th in W21L) and club coach Andrew Cox (5th in M55L).
The weekend was held in conjunction with the JHIs, an international competition for the junior squads (12-18) from Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales. This clearly seemed to influence the placings of many of the controls which often seemed a bit too glaringly obvious considering both competitions were championship races. Both races took place in Magilligan, a sanddune army base. Saturday was NIOC, an enjoyable race with fast terrain for runners with the exception of green patches which were slow to get through at times. I ran W21S, a 4.5km race and came 2nd and which can be seen below as an example of the map. James ran M21L, a very competitive 8km course, which he finished 9th in a quick time of 54.25. Many DUO Alumni members were present and had good runs such as Ruairi Short (7th in M21L), Regina Kelly (9th in W21L), past President of DUO Andrew Butterfield (10th in M50L), current President Ruth Lynam (8th in W21L) and club coach Andrew Cox (5th in M55L).
Sunday was the Irish Middle Distance. The Irish Champs had been held in Co. Down in May which would normally consist of a sprint race, a middle distance, a long distance and a relay, however instead of the Middle Distance we had an urban race in May. They decided to have the Irish Middle Distance with the NIOC to make another nice weekend of orienteering instead! The Middle Distance took place on a different part of Magilligan and the map was on a scale of 1:7500, different to the usual map scale of 1:10000. Sunday was most definitely a runner’s course, with lots of vehicle tracks adding to the runnable terrain. You can see my W21L map below, a 2.9km course. James ran the 5.2km Mens 21 Elite course in just over 42 minutes
An enjoyable weekend overall, the only downside was the run-in both days as we were running into the strong wind! Thank you to NWOC for organising the weekend. Hopefully more DUO members will be at the next Irish Middle Distance as part of the Irish Champs hosted by WATO 29th April-2nd May 2016 (see www.ioc2016.net for details!)