The Connacht Region Orienteering Council has changed the date of the Connacht Individual Championships from Sun 26th March to Sat 25th March in order not to clash with Leinster and Munster fixtures already made. The venue for the competition is Clonbrock Wood, Ahascragh, Co. Galway. Entry forms are being sent to clubs.

The Irish Individual Championships has been confirmed for Sunday 30th April in the Slieve Bloom mountains on a new area. The Irish Relay Championships will be held on Monday 1st May (Bank Holiday) on another new area in Tullamore, Co. Offaly in a relatively flat, runnable forest. The Event centre for the Championships will be Tullamore.

The 4th Western Brigade FCA Orienteering Championships is to be held on 16th April at a venue to be announced. The Connacht Schools O- Championships will be in Lough Key Forest Park in May.

Frank Ryan, Secretary/Treasurer CROC

AJAX used an interesting format for their Leinster League "butterfly" event at Saggart, Co. Dublin on February 6th. The longer courses had mass starts with all runners running essentially the same course for the first loop. Then there was a map exchange and all shared a common short loop round to the finish. The mass starts meant that there was much more of a "race" feel than we usually have with orienteering and Aonghus OCléirigh's courses managed to use the white parts of the forest to the full while avoiding the greener bits. Martin Flynn's new map was good and it's a worthwhile revision of a convenient area. If you thought you saw Sports Council Chairman John Treacy running round the forest, you're probably right: he lives nearby and was persuaded to give orienteering a try by a bit of judicious arm-twisting.

Gerry Brady has volunteered to take on the job of Irish Senior Team Manager, taking up where Ronan Cleary left off after last year's World Championships. Gerry will be working with Coach Aonghus OCleirigh to get the team ready for the 2001 World Championships in Finland, via the 2000 World Cup and other races closer to home. Read his piece on running training elsewhere in this issue.

Brazil "Nuts": A report in TIO 92 said that Brazil was not a full member of IOF. This, of course, should have read "Brazil is now a full member of IOF".

Going to the JK? Don't forget to come back in time for the Irish Championships the following Sunday and Monday!

NEW IOA ADDRESS The IOA web page has moved to http://homepage.eircom.net/~orienteeringireland/

The IOA's physical location has also moved, following the closure of the AFAS offices in the House of Sport. Any communications should be to the IOA Secretary, Rosarie Kiernan, 87 Meadowvale, Blackrock, Co. Dublin; e-mail rosariekiernen@hotmail.com

Congratulations to Una May and her cousin Barbara Scallan who won the Women's class in the Yetiloop 2-Day long-O at Zandvoort in Holland in October. Una and Barbara ran the 35 km course in 4.21.31 the first day and 3.40.05 the second. The terrain was sand dunes with vegetation ranging from forest to open via scrubby in betweens. The race used two maps: a 1:25,000 with 5 m contours and a 1:15,000 local tourist map. Control locations were given with grid references rather than master maps.

Waterford Orienteers have run two local events since the turn of the century. It has been great to see the mixture of young and old turning out. 70 enthusiastic orienteers competed in Portlaw on three courses, A/B, C and Wayfarers. There seemed to be difficulty chosing between the A/B and the C courses. For the more recent event at Ballyvolane, A and B were separated, Wayfarers dropped and C made slightly easier. The large number of competitors on the B course justified this decision. Short (4.5 km) with lots of controls (20) appears to be most attractive!

The next 3 events take to the open mountainside with Knockanaffrin on February 20th, followed by Coumshingaun and Mahon Falls. In March, a Waterford Secondary schools event will be run as preparation for the Munster and Irish schools events. We hope to also run a local event in the People's Park to attract Primary school children.

Andrew Cox.

The NIOA fixtures for 2000 are now on the Association website at

http://www.askip.demon.co.uk/nioa/nila.html

The old NIOA inf-O-line service stopped working before Christmas. A new service

has now been set up. The number from outside the UK is 0044-07020-963986. On an alpha keypad that's 070209 NEXTO. For NIOA/BOF it should cost around 10p to hear a message in the evening or at weekends. Inf-O-line gives the full details on the the next event in Northern Ireland. Get into the habit of calling before each event. This may not work from outside the UK/NI.

More O on TV: Rapid, on RTE Network 2, featured orienteering on 16th February. Aislinn Austin and Niall Bourke were filmed running a course at Dublin's Hellfire Woods for the programme. Apparently it was very good, conveying the excitement and fun of orienteering very well. Aislinn, meanwhile, had two good runs in W18 in the Future Champions Cup in Staffordshire and at a Badge event the next day.

Joss Lynam has a new book on the market, "Easy walks near Dublin". A useful introduction for families to the outdoors near the capital. Joss describes 40 walks within an hour of Dublin and the maps in the book are by Justin May. It's published by Gill & Macmillan - a snip at only IR£7.99.

This year's World Orienteering Marathon Trophy is a series of three events: the New Zealand Rogaining Championships on 15-16 January, the Raid IGN/Francital on 10-12 June, and the Slovenian Orienteering Marathon event on 14-15 October. The two best results count for the Trophy.

The rogaining event in New Zealand was held over 24 hours. The venue was North Canterbury, South Island and the event was organised by the Peninsula and Plain Orienteers. Teams consist of 2 to 5 persons.

The French event, Raid IGN/Francital, will be held in Hauteville (60km from Lyon). Standard British/French rules will apply. These include a compulsory bivouac with competitors carrying all necessary equipment.

The Slovenian Orienteering Marathon Championship event is run according to central European rules which are similar to those of the French event but competitors do not carry any bivouac equipment. There are two people on each team. The official invitation was due in early January.

To date 144 players and athletes have taken advantage of the sports science and medical support services provided by the National Coaching and Training Centre in Limerick, making 1,235 visits between them. Sports physiology, nutrition, medicine, psychology and biomechanics are covered by the network, which operates on an all-island basis.

What is interesting about the breakdown is that the most successful group of sports, in terms of Olympic Games and other major championships, are the most frequent users of the facilities. Rowing (456 visits from 25 athletes). athletics (353/39) and canoeing (75/12) were the three most frequent users.

Orienteering has five eligible athletes but there were no figures on usage.

Clonbrock, Ahascragh, Co. Galway is the venue for the Connacht Championships on Saturday March 25th. Entry forms have been circulated to clubs and the closing date for entries is (received by) Thursday 16th March. Clonbrock is an area of flattish working forest with some roads and paths and lots of drains. It's only about 10 km NW of Ballinasloe so it's not hard to get there.

Entry fees are £10 adults, £8 students, £7 juniors, £21 family. There's a discount of £4 for entries received by March 10th. Sportident electronic timing will be used so bring your SI card. Cards can be rented (£1) or bought (£15). Results booklet: add £2.

COC2000, Barrybeg Lodge, Barrybeg, Athlone, Co. Westmeath.

Congratulations We did it again despite what we thought on the day we managed to retain our Inter Club Title pipping Three Rock for the second year . We succeeded by having enough people out and willing to run their designated course on the day .Thank you to everyone who came out to run and or help out it was a great club effort. The AGM and party went off very well we all enjoyed the food thanks to Susan Watt who did our catering. Her mam Jane is her agent when she is not running across the country!! Jane ran and got us valuable points in Trooperstown we might entice her back to orienteering yet.Next event League in Ballinastoe 16th April Patrick Casey waiting to hear from all willing helpers. Nora Lalor

This year's Irish Senior Squad training camp in Finland is planned 10-14 July, the week preceding the Finnish 5-Day/ World Cup competitions. The focus of the training will be preparation for WOC2001. The format will be similar to that used in the 1999 training camp in Scotland with participants organising much of the training activities themselves. The camp will be conducted as part of an official WOC training week and it is likely that squads from all over the world will be training in the same forests at the same time. Squad accommodation will be in the city of Tampere, the venue for WOC2001. As with the training week held in Scotland last year all are welcome to attend. Especially welcome are orienteers who aspire to compete at senior international level in the future. Accommodation arrangements have not yet been finalised so firm costings are not available. However, costs will likely be reasonable. Anyone interested in participating should contact Aonghus O'Cleirigh.

Gerry Brady writes: "An Irish team will compete at the inaugural European Orienteering Championships in the Ukraine. Three events are being held during the period 30 June to 4 July and they also double as World Cup events. The Relay and Classic are part of the European Championship and the Presidents of European Federations proposed at a meeting in Scotland during WOC 1999 that the short race should also beincluded. The relay race will be three person teams with each country allowed two teams. Selection will be based on WOC 1999, the Irish Championships and other known form."

Congratulations to Team North/South, the first ever Irish team to finish the Discovery Channel Eco-Challenge in Argentina in December. The team consisted of orienteers Ursula McPherson (3ROC) and Timmy Flavin (KerryO) with Noel Hanna and Fraser Crawford. Ursula is the Director of Gartan Outdoor Education Centre in Co. Donegal and is (with her sister, Maeve) a former Irish Home International O-team member (as well as an experienced surfer, canoeist, pilot etc. etc.) Noel won his first ultra-marathon three years ago in the Himalayas, running 100 miles in less than 16 hours. They finished in a very respectable 25th place with a time of 7 days, 17 hours 58 minutes. The event was won by Team Greenpeace from New Zealand in 5 days and 33 minutes. 37 teams finished and 17 were disqualified.

The event consisted of ice climbing, rock climbing, mountaineering, horse riding, canoeing, sea kyaking and fixed ropes.

This committee met during the World Championships at Inverness last August. Here is what they were talking about ...

Summary from Technology Development Committee Meeting 4-6 August 1999 in

Inverness, Scotland

On Thursday, 5 August, TDC in cooperation with BOF's Technical Committee organised a successful open meeting. About 70 people attended. The meeting had a number of interesting and important presentations within the field of technology and orienteering.

Criteria for electronic punching systems (EPS) had been finalised and handed over to the ESC for implementation.

It was decided to survey the viewpoints of federations with relation to the timing systems issue. Should approval criteria be set up? What aspects of timing should be covered, etc?

Ian Watson, one of the project leaders of the Interface Standards Project, gave a presentation outlining the project's status. Proposals for syntax and for semantics exist. Feedback indicates that there is now an urgent need for the standards project to issue a first version of the standard.

TDC discussed at length the situation with regards to use of information technology at IOF events, and the lack of internet and telecommunications connectivity often seen at these events. TDC's role is to encourage the use of internet and web casting.

TDC decided to take on the task of setting up a proposal for guidelines for use of internet and tele-communications at IOF events.

(from the IOF web site www.orienteering.org)

Perhaps it is only a matter of time until access to the internet is a common as having a telephone is today. In the meantime, though, clubs and organisers should not assume that putting a notice on the IOA web page or in the Irish Orienteering electronic discussion group is sufficient to notify people about what's going on. A case in point was the recent Saggart mass-start butterfly event: if you weren't in the electronic net you didn't know what the start times were.

Certainly, it's a very good way of contacting the people who are connected up - the IOA is going to put its proposed Strategic Plan on the web page for comments before the AGM, for example - but we want to include everyone in orienteering, not just the nerds.

Perhaps it's laziness: it's done that way because it's easier, not because it's better. Just like IOF control descriptions rather than English ones which add yet another incomprehensible layer to the array of things a beginner has to cope with.

In a surprise press release the Institute for Advanced Physical Research (IAPR) has announced the outcome of a year-long survey into membership, entry and results software used by orienteering clubs and federations around the world.

The shock results show that Year 2000 (Y2K) problems with the hundreds of different software systems have proved impossible to fix in a consistent manner, and a major change in the structure of events will be necessary in order to overcome the potential chaos this will cause.

The research has shown that dates of birth are handled incorrectly by nearly half the systems examined. This means that age classes are calculated incorrectly. Tests have already detected a system which placed all entrants over the age of 10 into the M/W100 class, and a second system which will only allow negative age groups (M/W -35 for example) when used after 1st January 2000.

Following frantic last-minute activity, researchers Howard Orchard and Alberto Ximenes have come up with a new age group structure which they believe will solve the problem. The solution relies on the fact that the internal representation of dates of birth within the binary (1s and 0s) storage system used by each software system can be relied on to be correct. Therefore a move to use age groups based on powers of two will avoid the Y2K problems, and will allow age group events to continue as at present. The suggested new age groups at all orienteering events world-wide are therefore M/W8, M/W16, M/W32, M/W64 and M/W128.

"We recognise that this is not an ideal solution, but we feel that drastic action is necessary" says Dr. Orchard. "There will obviously be problems with the huge numbers of competitors in M/W32, and increasingly with M/W64 as the orienteering population ages. This may mean that start times at all events will need to be extended. In addition we expect significant opposition from 64-year-olds who were looking forward to moving up an age group on January 1st 2000, but who are now stuck in the same age group for another 64 years."

The researchers have suggested to the International Orienteering Federation that this new age class system is adopted world-wide with immediate effect. A final decision is expected to be announced by the IOF on 1st April 2000.

Simon Errington

London Orienteering Klubb

All-Ireland Schools Championships: Wednesday 12th April: Curragh, Co. Kildare. Irish Schools Champs (Leinster Schools OA). Transport available from Kildare or Newbridge railway station to the event.

Extra introductory events: Thursdays in April, May & June, morning, afternoon or evening by appointment. To be booked in advance. Contact Sean Cotter 021-546194 or scotter@cit.ie.

Further details: Cork Schools League : 021-274904 Conchur O'Muimhneachain; 021-631555 Liam O'Brien; 021-546194 Sean Cotter; 022-47300 Ted Lucey.

Lindie Naughton says "Fancy doing a bit of training ? Like some company ? Then Crusaders wants YOU !

There are three fixed training nights: Tuesday & Thursday at Merrion Cricket Club, Anglesea Road, Ballsbridge (just opposite the junction with Simmonscourt Road behind the RDS main building), from 6.30 and indoors on Wednesday evenings from 6.50pm in Sion Hill, Merrion Avenue (the big gate on the right just before the traffic lights at Cross Avenue if you're coming from Blackrock). Members also do long hill runs at the weekends. So what are you waiting for !"

It doesn't seem like seven years (to me, at least) since the Irish Championships at Carlingford when we looked with disbelief at the snow covered mountain. Carlingford remains one of the most challenging areas in Leinster, both for the organising team and the competitors, and you are in the privileged position of being invited to run there again.

Entry forms are being circulated by the organisers, 3ROC, for the Leinster Championships at Carlingford, Co. Louth, on April 9th. The terrain is described as mainly open runnable mountainside with intricate rock and contour detail. All classes from M/W 10 to M/W 70 will be included though it's not clear to what extent A and B classes for juniors or long and short for adults will be catered for.

Sportident electronic timing will be used, so if you have an SI card, bring it along. If you don't have your own you can rent one for the day at £1.

Closing date for entries is (postmarked) 16th March: adults £8, students £5, juniors £4, families £20. Late entries to 25th March: adults £12, students £7, juniors £6, families £24.

Address: Máire Walsh, Moorpark, Kilmacanogue, Co. Wicklow.

Some time ago, TIO got details of a company selling GPS systems, so I'll pass them on to you. The company is CharterNav GPS Location & Timing Ltd., GPS House, Church Bay Road, Crosshaven, Co. Cork. They have Garmin GPS12 sets for IR£139, GPS III for IR£324 and GPS II+ for IR£206. (last September prices). Group rates for purchases can be arranged and they sell Silva compasses too. However, I wonder what they thing orienteering is? Here's their sales pitch: "Dear Orienteer enthusiast, Handheld receivers can be used when laying an Orienteering course, this makes it more time efficient and with accuracy of less than 100 metre guaranteed (mostly 30 metre accuracy) you can be sure that your course is accurate to the course card. Using GPS means that you can enter the course as a route and have a non experienced person lay the course". I dont think too many orienteers would be too impressed with controls sited to + or - 30 metres!