We Have Moved

The Lagan Valley Orienteering Junior Blog has moved to our new club website. Come on over and and find out what we are up to. All the old posts are there and you can also access our Training, Technical, Incentive Scheme and Junior Development Squad pages from the drop down menu at the top of the page.

Time Trials Success

Some of our Juniors set off to take part in the Irish Junior time trails in Phoenix Park Dublin on the 14 Mar. This is a selection criteria for those who wish to attempt to make it into the Juniors Irish Team. The day started with the time trial itself. This is made up of a loop of about 1.2 km with 60m of climb that takes in a truly cross country experience. It was made up of up and down hill sections, contouring lengths, river crossings and even some paths. Depending on age our juniors had to run between 2 to 4 laps.

Our team all did extremely well with a big well done to  Paul P and Andrew E who came first in their age class.

Following the time trials the juniors undertook compass training loops and then an excellent MicrO session around the visitors centre on a 1:1000 map. This was a tricky event that required very close attention to the map and the control descriptions as the controls had no control numbers and were only a few centimetres apart in places.

Success In Limerick for Luke

Our very own Luke and Rachel took part in a weekend of sprint orienteering at the University of Limerick (UL) Campus. The UL Campus encompasses student accommodation, lecture halls, libraries, sports grounds, restaurants, countryside, concert hall, walk ways and cycle tracks. It provides plenty of scope for sprint races that can also traverse the river Shannon (via a compulsary crossing point bridge). Luke won the the short individual course and both he and Rachel had a really great time.  

Rachel Reviews Her Course

Rachel spent some useful time to review her course on the NI Score Champs and work out an improved route. This is a really important thing to do after your races so that you can work out what worked well for you.  You can then concentrate on repeating that again in your next race. Try to focus on the positive from each race more than the things that went wrong. If you do identify some areas that you need to improve on then you can always raise that and we will include it in future training.

NI Score Champs and Night Champs

The Northern Ireland Score and Night Championships took place at Crawfordsburn on the 21 Feb. This was a great day of orienteering.  The Junior Champions are Rachael Collins and Peter Reed (Score) and Andrew Elwood and Sophie Pruzina (Night). Well done to them. The event also saw the issuing of Silverware from the NI Champs in late 2014.

Some juniors also took part in training at Drum Manor earlier in the week. This was a great opportunity to get some top class coaching and everyone enjoyed themselves.

Compass Capers

Our Junior Squad had a great afternoon out at Barnett's Park practicing compass work. This session required our team to be able to locate the control flag on several courses in which elements of the map detail had been removed. This needed accurate compass work. As did the very tricky corridor exercise that they were tasked with completing at the end. All of this followed a time trial preparation run as the warm up. A big thank you goes to Steph P for planning a great session.

We also had a number of beginners at the training who got the chance to practice basic O techniques on a cones exercise, learning to keep the map set, and symbols game prior to going on a map walk with a short course at the end. They were all excellent and very enthusiastic. We hope to see them all next time.

Meelmore Contour Training

The junior squad, as well as a number of adults, took to the hills at Meelmore to practice the use of contours as a navigation aid. It was a great sunny day but snow still lay on the ground as well as a lot of ice. The rivers were cold as well if you fell in!!. This was an excellent opportunity to get those cobwebs blown away after the festive season. It was also ideal training for the Lisburn O Festival in May as the races there will include Slieve Croob.

Junior Training For 2015

The list of Junior Training events for 2015 are now available. Get them in your diary soon to avoid disappointment.

Map Memory Training

The squad finished this year's training off with a tough map memory session at Musgrave Park, all planned by Billy. We started with some star exercises during which you had to look at a small map showing a single control, work out a route, memorise that route and then run to the control and back.

Following this each junior had to complete three courses that required them to remember the legs as they went round the course. This was made even more difficult in that the control markers were small bits of paper and not the usual orienteering flag. This meant you had to really work hard to find the control site and not the flag. If you were a few meters away you would likely not see the control marker.

Next Junior Training Event

The next junior training event will be held at Musgrave Park on the 30 Nov and will concentrate on map memory skills. We will meet at 1.30 pm. Be sure not to miss out.

NI Champs

The NI Champs and a training session took place over the weekend 4/5 Oct. The champs races were held at Castle Saunderson with the assembly area at the Scout Centre in Cavan.  This is a great location with a mix of open land, runnable forest and more difficult close forest terrain. The LVO team had a great showing securing some excellent results with the awards being presented by WOC Silver Medallist Scott Fraser.

The races were followed by a session of sprint training and then, after dinner in the Scout Centre, an inspiring talk on achieving goals and performance excellence from Scott. Day two was a session in Florence Court, planned by Scott, in which we practiced techniques in the thicker forest terrain before completing a middle distance race.

Junior Inter Regional Championships Roundup

Over the weekend 27/28 Sep 14 a team of 11 NI juniors travelled to take part in the Junior Inter Regional Championships in Cumbria, England. Two adults, Alan Elwood and Steph Pruzina, accompanied the team. One member of the LVO squad, Rachel Collins, was unable to attend due to breaking her arm the night before departure. She was greatly missed, as she has been a stalwart of the LVO Junior Development Squad and is a talented athlete.  It also meant there was no NI female relay team, although the remaining females got to run in an ad hoc team.

The team met up at the ferry on Friday evening and travelled down to Finsthwaite where we stayed in a church hall.  The floor was a bit hard for some of us, who had thin roll mats, but luckily Steph had a blow up mattress and Alan a camp cot so they were fine. This was only but fair, as they had been forced to endure horrendous singing for nearly 5 hours on the trip down!  The next day, Saturday, got off to a bright start. After a brisk forest walk the team headed to the venue at Graythwaite Hall for the first races. This was very technical and physically demanding terrain with a mix of hill, open forest, thicker forest, marsh and crags. It was also a warm and sunny day making the running thirsty work. The team found it tough going on these races but to the credit of individuals the majority completed their courses with top placed finisher being Paul Pruzina who came 13^th in his race.

The second day saw us move to an area of open and complex sand dunes, known as Roanhead, to take part in the relay races. The weather was overcast but warm making it ideal for racing and watching alike.  Each relay team had a M/W16 who ran first followed by a M/W 14 and then finally a M/W18. The girls formed an ad hoc team with a girl from West Midlands who was also called Rachel and who had also broken her arm a while back and still had the support on. Spooky!! Once more it was tough racing for many of our team as they coped with the complex and confusing mapping of the dunes. Our top boys team of James Millar, Andrew Elwood and Paul Pruzina did very well coming a respectable 9^th out of 34 teams. Thankfully for Alan’s nerves the drive back was much quieter as everyone fell asleep for much of the journey. 

The NI JIRCs team included:

·      Paul Pruzina

·      Eoghan Knight

·      Andrew Elwood

·      Peter Reed

·      Conor McGuinness

·      Peter Meehan

·      Peter McClure

·      Gill Stephens

·      Frazer Howe

·      James Millar

·      Sophie Pruzina