With WOC 2015 organisation in full flow, it’s exciting to see a website made by some of the athletes: Project 2015. I referred to this (at least, I believe this is it and there isn’t a SEDS specific site on the way) a while back after Hector Haines had hinted during the SOUL series prize giving of it’s imminence. It makes it more worthwhile to be involved in something that the athletes, the stars of show, are getting excited about three years before it actually happens. Most of the athletes who are likely to be representing Team GB in 2015 are on the list of those involved in the site.
It looks like there will be weekly blogs written by members of team, the latest from Hector Haines gives us an insight on his thoughts about where the races are likely to be and the challenges that await for the athletes. A lot of what he says is actually still being debated by the organising team, planners, controllers and the IOF so it’s interesting to see the thoughts from the athlete perspective.
A lot of the athletes vying for spots in 2015 have their own public blogs, some of which are regularly updated and very interesting reads. Here’s a list of the ones I’ve got in my feed reader:
I’ve been getting a bit frustrated recently with all the different solutions out there in the orienteering world for working out and publishing standings from a series of races. All the solutions are good in their own way but they are very inflexible having been designed to work only for a specific series. I thought it would be great if there was an online application where series coordinators could go and easily set up their series, races, courses, then select what scoring system to use and that would be about it. There would be no need to have a requirement to find someone technologically minded to do it, no linking to a spreadsheet or any other archaic system. It would be a clean, easy to use, online interface.
I’ve been working on this for a few months now, on and off, and it’s certainly in a usable state. It is currently live at o-results.net and hosting standings from EUOC’s FwtN series. It’s been released with the caveat of being in an ‘Alpha’ state, this means it’s going to break… hopefully not very often but people shouldn’t be surprised if it does. I’ve been working on the front end quite a bit recently and have just this week put live a bunch of features to allow users who spot errors in the results to submit them for administrator approval. No more admins hacking about in databases to make changes, just a nice clean user interface with the added security of the series admin approving each change. Without the approval who knows what the results might end up looking like!
These are the current features:
Set up series with any number of races
Any number of courses
Races can be part of more than one series
Currently only results by course are supported
Standings calculated by a number of points per place
Edit/Merge runners if data is incorrect
There are a lot of different features I could implement on o-results.net so at the moment I am focussing on the ones I think are important. If you are reading this and would like to use the site for a series you are administrating then please get in touch. If it will work given the current state I’ll set it up for you. If not I can push priorities around to get it up and running asap.
I haven’t been blogging much (boo) over the summer, in fact I didn’t do much over the summer running wise. It all started with a little niggle and then holidays and things got in the way. I’m back running more regularly now and even feeling reasonably quick given my <100% effort 5k of 19mins the other day! Despite my summer of laziness I have just hit 1000 miles run this year, very exciting.
I hope to blog a bit more about the process of organising the World Champs in 2015, I’m trying to figure out how to do so without giving any secrets away but also making it an interesting read. It was good to hear from Hector Haines last week that SEDS (who have a standalone website in the works) are excited about the lead up to 2015 and that it’s going to be a focus of theirs, hopefully the organisation part of WOC can support our athletes and vice versa.
I probably should have written something about my experiences at WOC this year, but time got the better of me. I was there for two reasons, to observe how the Swiss organised the World Champs and to also soak in the atmosphere as it was my first time being at a World Champs in person. Not only was it an amazing experience but we (the 5 of us there who are involved with the 2015 organisation) had a lot of good discussion about how to progress plans for 2015. Anyway, WOC 2015, watch this space…
I’m extremely pleased to have been chosen for this volunteer role, ever since the initial conception of the bid I have been very keen to get involved. I was the IT manager for the Park World Tour event we hosted in Perth in 2010 and it was this that gave me a flavour of what’s involved in an event on the international stage. The World Champs may never come back to Scotland, even the UK, so I felt that now was by far the best opportunity to get involved and deliver a fantastic orienteering spectacle.
This role is most definitely not a one man show and it is also not just one event, there will be a series of events over the next 3 years in the lead up to the World Champs in August 2015. We haven’t worked out the full details yet but the plan will be to have someone in charge of each section of my remit who I will work with me in order to shape WOC into what it needs (deserves?) to be. I’m really looking forward to the challenge and finding an enthusiastic, skilled team is my first priority. So if you have an interest or aptitude for any Orienteering related IT, and the enthusiasm to deliver a fantastic WOC then please get in touch.
Exciting times ahead for Orienteering IT in the UK!
This year the annual JK (Jan Kjellstrom) Festival of Orieenteering was held very close to home. The sprint was a mere 15min drive from my house and the rest of the events an hour or so North in Perthshire. A very welcome distance to travel for such a large event, closer than most of our Scottish O League events!
I hadn’t set myself any goals for the weekend other than to try and run as cleanly as possible and see what I could do. I won’t bore anyone with race details, if you really want to read about my races in more detail, they’re on my attackpoint log.
Sprint – Livingston
The weekend started on a dreary Friday lunchtime in Livingston, who had pulled out all the stops to welcome us to their fair city, the signs were an especially nice touch:
Picture from Terry Johnstone
I came a very mediocre joint 69th after having a few wobbles, at least it’s top half but I am capable of more. A bit sad to be 1 second behind fellow ESOC member Andrew Lindsay, although at the JK Sprint last year I beat him by 1sec so a fair trade! I definitely need to invest in a pair of trail shoes to cope with wet pavement and wet grass. I’m glad I ran in trainers rather than flats!
I also recorded this race with my headcam, it was a bit damp though!
Middle – Dunalastair (WRE)
I felt a bit naked at Dunalastair running without my GPS on for the first time in ages. You aren’t allowed to use GPS devices with a screen in WREs (World Ranking Event). I had a fairly decent race, losing time here and there but nothing major to give me another mediocre result of 69th. I lost 2 mins at number 4 because of a dodgy bit of vegetation boundary mapping. I was cursing at the time but I shouldn’t have allowed it to happen. Most of the top guys had realised by this point that the vegetation wasn’t perfect so they were going on contours and compass. I need to work on using my compass as I often neglect it, especially in thicker forest. My result gave me a start time of 11.30 in the long race, thankfully not too early!
Long – Craig a’Barns
This was the big one, I knew the area was going to be physical but I wasn’t quite expecting it to be as tough as it was. I had happily predicted a sub-80 winning time and that I would be in under 2 hours. Not to be! Doug Tullie won it with an excellent race in 87.57, just a couple of mins under the estimated winning time, and only just ahead of Scott Fraser who won overall after his awesome run at Dunalastair. I was a bit further back in 128.25, which was enough for a reasonable 31st place. It’s a lot higher than the previous two days because all the juniors run little short courses while we old men get to slog it out over the full distance. I didn’t have a clean race, but not horrific. I lost a lot of time in the far north section (6+ mins) where I, again, failed to follow my compass through the thick forest. Thankfully my run was good enough to put me near the front of the ‘punter elite’ pack, which was nice. I finished 33rd overall in M21Elite (doesn’t include the sprint) which I am happy with as I know I have things to work on!
I helped a bit after my run (we ‘elites’ had been left off the helper list so had no specific job – this was the ESOC day) but was glad to not have much to do. At 7 there was a meeting about the World Champs in 2015, which I am going to play a part in the organisation for (I should really write a post about it). By the time I got back to our accommodation at 9pm I was shattered and worrying about how I was going to cope with 40+ mins of hilly running at 10am the next day…
Relay – Newtyle Hill
We were never going to challenge the big boys in the JK Trophy class so there was no pressure to go and do anything amazing. Again my focus was to try to stay as clean with the navigation as possible and see what the legs would do. I really struggled physically but enjoyed it immensely. I had a few tussles and was rarely far away from anyone else, something you only really get in a relay first leg!
I came back in 32nd place and the lads, Craig and Andrew managed to maintain the position (Craig gained a bit, Andrew lost a few places) for 32nd overall. Perhaps next time we should pot hunt on the short? Some of Andrew and Craig’s Scottish Juniors team mates were 2nd in the men’s short and we could have beaten them
