Greetings North West members

There has been a bit of a hiatus in orienteering in Auckland over the past few weeks but August and September are shaping up to be busy with no fewer than 4 Auckland Orienteering Series (AOS) events plus the Auckland inter-club relays.

The next Woodhill Forest event is on 15 August and we are keen to help club orienteers – especially our newer members, gain experience and confidence in running forest courses.  We will offer coaching for club members from 9.30am to around 10.30am before participants run their AOS course. We encourage experienced club members to come along and help and meet some of our newer club members. Join us for a picnic lunch after your run.

Behind the scenes, we are busy planning the 2022 event calendar. Covid 19 has made the last 18 months have been a bit challenging and while not all events and plans have come to fruition, we have been luckier than orienteers in many countries. However, I would like to especially thank Cameron de L’Isle for his efforts in helping to establish a new schools orienteering committee, comprising representatives from the 3 Auckland clubs, student reps and Lactic Turkey, which aims to promote orienteering among students, set standards for events and facilitate planning and scheduling of events for Year 7/8 and secondary students.

Our smart new Trimtex club orienteering shirts have arrived and we will have these available for purchase ($79) at upcoming events.

I look forward to seeing you all at Woodhill on the 15^th – and again at our NWOC club event on 29 August!

Happy orienteering

Lisa Mead
President NWOC

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1. Events Calendar
2. Coaching session 15 August
3. What we did in July
4. Interview with Oliver Braun
5. OCAD and Purple Pen
6. World orienteering Champs 2021 analysis
7. Low-key training days
8. New members

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1.Events Calendar
August
Sun 08 Lactic Turkey TrailNav teams rogaine – Riverhead. Entry details: 
        https://www.lacticturkey.co.nz/rogaines/enter/
Sun 15 AOC AOS 8 Mushroom Road (Woodhill Forest) Pre-Enter here
Sun 15 NWOC Training/ coaching 9.30am prior to AOS event at Mushroom Road (see below)
Sun 22 CMOC AOS 9 Waiuku Forest South
Sun 22 WHO Huanui, near Whangarei (https://www.sporty.co.nz/whorienteering/)
Sun 29 NWOC AOS 10 Hedley Dunes. Pre-Enter here

September
Wed 01 AOC 7.00pm Night Street event, 25 Dexter Ave, Mt Eden. Event uses MapRu6n. Details can be found here: https://orienteeringauckland.org.nz/events/night-street-series/
Wed 08 AOC Night Street event (MapRun6) 47 Harlston Rd, Mt Albert
Mon 13 Lactic Turkey AKL Schools Relays, Ambury Regional Park (Date to be confirmed – alternate date 10 September)
Sun 12 CMOC Auckland Inter Club relays at Botanical Gardens. FREE entry to all club members running for a NWOC team.
             We need orienteers of all ages -especially juniors! Further details to come.
Wed 15 AOC Night Street event (MapRun6): 15Wright Road, Point Chev
Sun 19 AOC AOS 11 Grass Track Road, Muriwai (New map used once for the 2021 Auckland
             Secondary School Champs). This event will be the NWOC Club Champs.
Wed 22 AOC Night Street event (MapRun6): 10 Brilliant St, St Heliers
Junior Orienteering Training Camp (12-17 December 2021) - Student registrations for camp will be open between September 1st and 30th 2021 and a link will appear in the next issue of Compass Point, the Orienteering NZ newsletter.

October
Sun 17 NWOC AOS Lake Kereta
Labour Weekend: 23-25 October: Tuaraki Northern Region orienteering Champs
Sat 23 Middle distance Whakaroa, Taupo
Sun 24 (Morning) Sprint, Taupo
Sun 24 (4.00pm) Harris Interclub rogaine event, Tihiotonga Centennial Park, Rotorua.
Mon 25 Long distance Okere Falls (SHY 33, near Rotorua)
Recommended to book accommodation soon. Event details: https://www.obop.org.nz/north-regional-champs.html

Check out the club website for details of other events in 2021: https://www.nwoc.org.nz/events/
AOS = Auckland Orienteering Series – events generally have 9 courses of varying lengths and difficulty.

2. NWOC Coaching session 15 August & shared or picnic lunch
Set your alarm clock and come out to Woodhill Forest a little earlier on 15 August for the next Auckland series event on the Mushroom Road map. Experienced NWOC orienteers will be on hand to offer coaching to less experienced and newer club members before you run a course.  We will have maps and will form small groups to take a walk in the forest, reading the map, learning how to orientate the map, identifying handrail features and route choices etc.

We will meet at Registration, ready to start the coaching, at 9.30am. The coaching will be for approximately one hour, before you run your orienteering course. Meet up after your run to have a quick debrief with the coaches.

Get to know fellow NWOC club members and meet up with old friends at a shared lunch (or your own picnic) from around 12.30/ 1.00pm.

In order to help with logistics (printing maps, arranging coaches), please text or email Lisa Mead : 021 1359631 and email: mead10b@gmail.com or northwestorienteering@gmail.com to let us know if you would like to be part of the coaching session.

We will look at also having pre-event coaching at Hedley Dunes on 29 August.

3. July event reports

North West Bivouac Outdoor Rogaine #2, 11 July
Once again around 300 competitors enjoyed another fun rogaine in the private Slater Road forest and in Woodhill Forest, with beautiful sand dune terrain, mostly open clean running and no mud to speak of. Big thanks to course planners Kay Knightbridge and Beth Spence, controller Renee Beveridge and of course to Rob Garden and Marquita Gelderman, who opened up their property to us. Rob also spent many hours leaf-blowing the pine-needles off more than 9 kms of forest tracks – no blaming vague tracks for your errors!
National elite champion, Matt Ogden, travelled up from Nelson to take the win, visiting all checkpoints in just over 70 minutes, while Kayla Fairbairn was impressive in also bagging all checkpoints, albeit with a penalty for being just 9 minutes over the time limit.
A number of canine participants also enjoyed the forest along with their human navigators.

Thank you to our sponsors Bivouac Outdoor and Boric Orchards.


The NZ Secondary School Champs took place in Hawkes Bay, attended by around 350 students and was by all accounts a very well-run event, with a tricky sprint on the Splash Planet map, followed by a long-distance and relay on mostly open, hilly farmland – not such familiar terrain for Aucklanders. Well done to all the club members who participated: Charlotte Spence, Zachary Boss, Rosie Monckton, Annie-Rose and Meg Collins, Oliver Day and to Sienna Payne, who had an excellent top 6 result in the Intermediate Girls championship race.

14 club members headed up North to compete on the Whangarei Club’s new Flyger Road map, braving mud, hilly farmland and a couple of tight control placements on a very scenic map with some good route choices and tracts of both plantation/pine and native forest. Course setter Daniel Monckton taped some slightly vague animal tracks in native bush, thus connecting the two halves of the map, but I suspect a few people spent rather longer than expected extricating themselves from the bush! There were some stunning views out to the coast and the thunder storm held off until we were safely en route home.

Spot the track in the native bush… Images: Nick & Daniel Monckton, Anna Hainsworth

Orienteering Bay of Plenty’s annual Great Forest Rogaine in Whakarewarewa forest, Rotorua attracted nearly 700 participants, including a contingent of NWOC members spread out over the 3 and 6 hour MTB and the 3/ 6 hour Foot rogaine options.  The event started at Blue Lake for the first time and the foot rogaine included a new area of native forest with abundant supplejack and lots of unofficial trapping line trails which were not shown on the map.  I’ve seldom finished an event so ingrained with dirt after slithering down hundreds of metres of steep muddy slope on my rear. Kudos to the speedy Fairless Ogainers (Matt Ogden and Kayla Fairbairn) who covered 22 kms on foot, lost 600 points for being 12 minutes late but still equalled the winning 3-hour Mixed Open grade foot rogaine score.
Marquita Gelderman and Rob Garden had a perfectly judged race to win the Mixed Open 6-hour MTB rogaine, right up there with the leading open men’s teams. Here they are recovering with a post-race pizza.

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4. Interview with NWOC club member Oliver Braun
Oliver joined North West earlier this year and always enters the Red 1 (hardest course both technically and physically). Despite efforts by both the club secretary and president to persuade this unknown orienteer to consider starting off with a less challenging course on our new Riverhead map, Oliver stuck to his guns: “ It's been almost 23 years since my last orienteer but as I told Annemarie, I'm happy to lose on a red but certainly not on a yellow course, haha false pride.”
He has made great progress in just 6 months this year and will soon be challenging more experienced orienteers.

Number of years orienteering?
4-5 years- see reply below.

How were you introduced to orienteering?
So, I did my first orienting back in high school during a project week at the end of the school year about 1994ish, but I really don't remember exactly. I only knew, I loved it straight away and I continued with the weekly orienteering runs until I left school 1998 and orienteering was even part of my final exams at high school, sport, was counting 1/6th of the grade. After my exam run yellowish/orangish without ever running with compass, I think it was about 11 controls on 9 km, no contours, which I finished in 40mins, 5mins left to not get A+.

My teacher back then tried hard to get me into the orienteering club, but I had so many other things to do and even though I liked orienteering I only wanted to do it for fun during school and after I didn't fit it into my schedule anymore.

My next run was this year after nearly 23 years in Woodhill forest, Temu Rd, red1, die hard DNF 23rd/30  taking 3h20ish without water... I really didn't know what to expect.

Key orienteering achievements to date?
In High school we took part in the annual state school champs and at my first competition I came in first, guess that's my best achievement besides my final exam run. I took part in 3 or 4 school championships and except for one where I had a big space out I was always somewhere at the top but just cannot remember anymore.

Current orienteering project or goal?
Now I just wanted to get back into cardio exercise and was looking for a map of Riverhead Forest as I just don't like road running too much and that's when I stumbled across NWOC and straight away thought that this is a great way to stay motivated, like I said, I loved orienteering straight away. So my goals are basically just getting fitness back together and aiming for less than 2 hours or even 1hour 30 Red1 finishes, because I'm competitive after all.

Favourite map and why?
My favorite map in NZ so far was Turkey Ridge, I guess both maps from this years events simply because I could see and translate the terrain much better into the map and vice versa.

Map you have yet to experience but aspire to orienteer on?  Orienteering hero?
No idea about a map I haven't run on yet and neither do I know anything about orienteering heroes, sorry, I'm just having fun.

Day job?  I'm a self-employed lawn mower man, Lawn Mowing North West Auckland

Other interests?
Being a bhakti yoga practitioner, or in general terms being a Hare Krishna, is my main occupation, my spiritual journey, which, by the way, has nothing to do with physical yoga exercises. Nevertheless, I was teaching Ashtanga Yoga for some time as well. I love growing veggies and vegetarian cooking, my wife and myself have been hosting also regular vegan cooking classes before our daughter has been born and now we're still cooking once a week on a voluntary basis at the Loft Yoga lounge in the city.

  
Oliver Braun (photo by Jenny Cade)                                                      The map Oliver helped fieldwork in his hometown in Germany in 1996

5. OCAD & Purple Pen – mapping and course setting options     (Geoff Mead)
OCAD https://www.ocad.com/en/  is a software package used for map drawing and setting orienteering courses. NWOC has invested (fee is over $100 per license per year) in 5 OCAD team licenses. A team license can be transferred between club members as required, one transfer per license every 24 hours. So, at any one time 5 club members can be using OCAD.

Gene Beveridge gene.beveridge@gmail.com manages the NWOC OCAD licenses and the NWOC map library. Gene contacts course setters / controllers well before each NWOC event and supplies a course setting package (O map, course setting guidelines, access to OCAD, etc).        

The club policy for the allocation of the OCAD licenses is that course setters / controllers for NWOC orienteering events and mappers working on club mapping projects have first call on the licenses. When we have several events close together and an active mapping project(s) the OCAD licenses can be in high demand. It is also very common that most events will require some map updates (new tracks, vegetation change with tree felling, etc).

Don’t panic, we have options to manage these periods of peak OCAD license demand.

Free tools can be used and they are also a great option when learning about O mapping and course setting.

• Purple Pen  https://purplepen.golde.org/  free orienteering course setting software. Purple Pen can easily be used for events like a rogaine or an AOS (Auckland Orienteering Series). Purple Pen is only used for course setting, it can’t be used for any map updates.
• OCAD viewer https://www.ocad.com/en/viewer/ is free OCAD software that can be used to view OCAD maps and courses (but can’t be used to make any changes).
• Openorienteering  https://www.openorienteering.org/ is a free orienteering mapping package that is almost as good as OCAD. The Openorienteering package can work with OCAD files. For example, you can open an OCAD map in Openorienteering, make changes (e.g.  add a new track) and then save the file as an OCAD file. Openorienteering cannot be used for course setting.     

Here are some scenarios when there is a high demand for the NWOC OCAD licenses. We need to help Gene in his job managing the OCAD licenses.                   

• A course setter / controller duo can use one OCAD license and the OCAD viewer. Either swapping the OCAD license between themselves or limiting map and course changes to one person and the other person uses the OCAD viewer to review the changes & courses.
• A course setter / controller duo uses Purple Pen for course setting and one OCAD license OR Openorienteering for any map changes. So, this can be a no OCAD license option.
• A mapping project, perhaps someone learning / experimenting, or a long-term project, use Openorienteering.

It is our strong recommendation that all OCAD users check the option to return the license when OCAD is closed. This option is visible when you open OCAD with a new license and checking it will mean you are not hogging a license around the clock, as long as you close OCAD when you are finished for the day. 
       

6. World Orienteering Champs 2021 – videos and analysis
The World Orienteering Champs were held in early July in the Czech Republic.  Travel restrictions associated with the Covid 19 pandemic meant that just two of our European-based athletes, Tim Robertson and Toby Scott, represented NZ in the individual events – sprint, middle and long-distance races.

 The Champs got off to a very exciting start with Tim racing superbly to take out the bronze Sprint medal at Terezin.   Both Tim and Toby battled their way through a very challenging, somewhat green, hilly and rock-strewn map to qualify for the middle-distance final – a great achievement.   Tim also placed 27^th in the sandstone terrain of the long-distance race.

 Czech out (pun intended) the amazing videos of the World Champs races and maps, see how drone photography of the forest is transformed into an orienteering map overlaid with the courses and route analysis. These can be found on the WOC2021 website (https://woc2021.cz/) : https://www.facebook.com/woc2021/videos/3588828368024489/ (Pre-view videos for most races)
https://www.instagram.com/p/CRHkIgfnSa-/

Gene Beveridge and Tom Reynolds also interview Tim Robertson on his World Champs Sprint (technique and training tips) and the forest terrain in the July NavChat.

7.  Woodhill Forest low-key orienteering training reminder
A reminder that Auckland and North West clubs have negotiated an agreement with the Woodhill Forest owners, Nga Maunga Whakahii O Kaipara Ngahere Limited, for improved access to the forest for training.   The clubs pay the access fees. Generally, the training is self-directed and targeted at competent orienteers - there will not be actual control flags in the terrain.

If you have an interest in using this forest access to develop your own orienteering skills, contact:
Cameron de L’Isle for NWOC members interested in the training access.
Cameron: 021 08252070 or email camerondelisle@gmail.com Future training dates: 08 and 21 August/ 4 September.

8. Welcome – and goodbye for now
A warm welcome to Katie Northfield, Michelle Dalzell and Natalie Paynter.  And goodbye temporarily to Alice Tilley, who departs Auckland in September to complete an MSc in Water Science, Policy and Management at prestigious Oxford University.