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.