Discussion: Do It Yourself Orienteering

Do It Yourself Orienteering at Sandwell Valley, Birmingham, UK this morning. What do you do when all events are cancelled within 100 miles?

http://dennismews.blogspot.com/

Drive farther away?

For what it's worth, half the meets my club holds are 100+ miles away. And to get to any other club's meets I'd have to drive about 300 miles, if not a lot more.

The UK is a small country, with a good (free) motorway network, so we're used to finding a good event within an hour or two. There was an event last Sunday in the New Forest but I rarely drive 3 hours each way, just to run for an hour.

At least going to Sandwell, driving and running time were equal - I know, I run too slow!

And gas (petrol) is three times more expensive!

I don't think we Americans would be so blasé about driving 300 miles to orienteer if we had to pay $120 for the 15 gallons we'd burn doing so.

Thanks for the blog link; interesting reading and maps.

Well, my car (and many other peoples' cars) would use 8 gallons, not 15 gallons, to go 300 miles ... so presumably that would bring my gas cost down to $64 at UK prices.

Not that $64 is insignificant, but I would still balk more at the time required to make the drive, rather than the fuel expense. Even at UK fuel prices.

Petrol (gas), for me, is the main cost of orienteering. I usually team up with other club members to share the driving and the expense. Even with 4 in the car, the gas costs more than the entry fee. And I'm happy to pay this every week to get my fix!

The 3rd annual MoboGoGlobo! is coming on March 5th (AP event here). No driving required. No expensive petrol. All you need is a phone or Skype-enabled device.

I think I would prefer to go back to Sandwell Valley and have another go - I was rubbish on my first attempt!

Was that something novel for you Dennis? Do you normally do all your orienteering at "races"?

Yes, almost all my orienteering is in competition. It was great to do something that was a bit more relaxed.

Some call it "training". Have another go at it.

ZING!!!

Army Orienteering for me yesterday.
http://dennismews.blogspot.com/

Sandwell will have to wait a while.

Hi Dennis, nice job getting out for some training, keep it up.

On Attackpoint, your training log is a better place to post these types of activity updates and links to your blogspot blog.

Can someone please convert gallons to litres, miles to kilometres, gas to petrol and US$ to A$ for me so I can run a comparison of fuel costs? :P

tRicky appears to have been less than serious.

I had my DIY orienteering moment some weeks ago. I made training controls/markers for night O training - string and refletive tape - and decided to try them out. So I planned a course, dropped controls at opposite/other order and then ran the course slighty harder in right order and picked controls up. I used my DIY headlamp/battery pack. I used home brew online gps tracking as usual. The map was mapped by me, and for mapping I had used my home brew cell phone mapping app.

I have no plans to improve that, quite the opposite.