Author Archives: Duncan

Bowhill November 2016

Full results for the event including split times are now available HERE

Unfortunately the Orange and Light Green Courses had a control box that didn’t work. This was Control Box 110 – Control 4 on the Orange Course and Control 2 on the Light Green Course.

The displayed results have taken that Control Box out of the split times, so the Orange Course shows Start,1,2,3,5,6… and the Light Green Course shows Start.1.3.4.5…

Apologies if I’ve got a name or an age wrong amongst the Juniors, especially where pairs where involved.

Eb Rooney, Planner reports:

Another excellent turnout for this event, with close to 40 competitors, pairs or families – not quite as high as Selkirk Hill but encouraging for a cold November day with the alternative attractions of warm houses and a rugby international to watch in the afternoon.

This was my first attempt at organising and planning, and it was difficult to gauge how long the courses might take, or how easy people would find them. In the event, there was a good spread of times on all courses, and people seemed to have enjoyed themselves. Well done to the winners – Ellie Darlow winning by a healthy margin on Yellow, Anne Smith taking Orange, and John Tullie making short work of Light Green. The only down side was the malfunctioning control (110) on Orange and Light Green, which was annoying – but maybe it’s good for us to be reminded from time to time of how to punch manually when the electronics let us down.

I’m very grateful to Robin and Rob, who gave lots of input and advice on course design and the choice of control sites, and particularly to Robin as Controller, and for helping to re-plan the courses when we discovered (two days before the maps were due to be printed) that the chosen site for the last few controls and the finish was now out of bounds owing to forestry operations! Hence the rather circuitous route back to the car park up a steep slippy hill.

Thanks also go to Duncan, for setting up and manning registration and download, and getting the results up in double quick time despite the problems with the faulty control; to Mhorag for putting on soup and rolls and wonderful home baking – perfect for a cold November afternoon; Rob for additional help with recce’ing the courses and setting out controls; Lindsey for instruction in the delights of the CONDES course planning software and for some minor amendments to the map; Ian, James, Robin, Rob, Pauline and Cathy for bringing in controls and tidying up the course; and of course to Buccleuch Estates for permission to run the event in such beautiful surroundings.

Thanks also to Ian for running the compass training course before the event.

Selkirk Hill October 2016

There was a wonderful turnout of competitors today, Saturday 22nd October, for the event on Selkirk Hill. We got the best of the weather as the rain stopped just after Susan, Rob and I arrived at 9am to put out the controls and only started again just after we drove away at 4:30pm having collected in all the controls.

We were delighted to see the cubs, scouts and explorers as well as Mums and Dads from Melrose and Lauder. Thanks to Mhorag Heger for firing them all up with the enthusiasm to come along and get a taste of orienteering. We hope we have whetted your attitude for more and look forward to seeing you all at Bowhill in November.

Full results for the event including split times are available HERE

For the first time since I have been a member of Roxburgh Reivers we had more competitors on the Yellow course than any other course. There was also just one competitor less on the Orange course than there was on Light Green. The numbers meant we had to use a lot of non-waterproof maps with map cases on on the Yellow course and one or two on the Orange course but I’m pleased to say we never ran completely out of maps for the courses people wanted. I think we may have recycled a couple of maps. It was good to see a very sturdy push chair going round the Yellow course. You are never too young to start orienteering and you are never too old as I have been to competitions where a W90 was competing.

I planned the Yellow course to aim for a 15 minute winning time and three people got inside that. I was looking for a 30 minute winning time for the Orange and about 35 for the Light Green so I was delighted to see the first place runner in each of those classes coming in very close to the target time.

The Orange and Light Green courses were planned to give a choice of routes between the controls and the Light Green planning aimed to send competitiors across the path network on the direct route rather than along it. There are a lot of paths on Selkirk Hill so I didn’t always achieve the aim.

On Selkirk Hill, experience has shown that it is prudent to gripple the controls to a secure piece of tree or shrub and that meant that some of the controls were slightly further into the thorn bushes than would have been ideal. Sorry about that.

Congratulations to the winners. Ian Bethune led the field home on the Light Green finishing in front of all the Roxburgh Reivers with an excellent time of 34:42. Keith Murray was just 11 seconds behind. On the Orange course Paul Morris finished on 31:06 just over a minute and a half ahead of Colin Rooney. The honours on a closely fought Yellow course went to Joseph Kirk on 12:52 just over a minute ahead of Cameron Rankine.

Looking at the split times on the Light Green we can see that Patrick Heger was going well until 10 to 11 and 11 to 12 where he was passed by both Keith Murray and Ian Bethune. Looking at the map again this evening, I think I put the control on the east side of the knoll at 12 rather than the west as it says on the control description. Oops! Keith was actually fastest to the last control but then lost the lead to Ian on the run in to the Finish. I wonder if Keith and Ian went different ways.

Finally my thanks go to my wife Susan and Rob Cranston for helping put out the controls in the morning. Thanks to them again plus Keith Murray and Eb Rooney for helping to collect them in after the event.

Eb Rooney is planning the event in Bowhill on Saturday 19th November. Start times again are 1pm to 2pm. We had 43 competitors or pairs of competitors today. Let’s see if we can get well over 50 towards 75 at Bowhill.

Duncan Shiell
22nd October 2016

Teviothead Results

Congratulations to everyone who ventured out into wet hills of Teviothead today. There was an impressive turnout of over 30 hardy souls. A special welcome to two orienteers from Solway who ventured East to run on Reivers territory today.

It was encouraging to see a number of orienteers taking on the challenge of the contour-only course. The ordinary Light Green course used exactly the same controls so the contour only competitors can compare themselves against those who had the benefit of the black detail on their map. Ian Maxwell, who ran the contour only course had the fastest time of all, but Ian might just have a little bit of local knowledge as well.

The competition at the top of all the standard courses was fierce with Faisal Khursheed winning the Light Green by under two minutes, Marc Heger just pipping Yousuf Khursheed by a minute and half in the Orange and Eilidh Murray had less than a minute to spare over Emma Amos in the Yellow.

In the Light Green Course, James Purves’ time has been adjusted to reflect the fact that his Start punch didn’t register properly. To make the mathematics simple James we just deducted 828 minutes from your recorded first leg time!]

The full results from today’s event can be found by clicking here

The Club barbecue required a further degree of hardiness from Club Members although there was a cover over the barbecue. Thanks are due to John Tullie for fabricating a cover from black bin bags at short notice. A good deal of food and drink was consumed.

The Autumn Series of events is scheduled to start in September. Further details will appear on the website in due course and we look forward to welcoming more and more orienteers to our events.