Summer League #6: Warrenscourt Wood Tuesday June 18th Results and Report

Post date: Jun 21, 2019 4:58:10 AM

Warrenscourt Wood was the orienteering destination for the sixth event in the CorkO Summer League. Almost 90 competitors headed west towards Macroom on a fine summer evening & the showers stayed away to give a very pleasant evening in the Kilmurray end of the wood. Early on it looked like we would have parking chaos when the local scout group began to arrive for an end of year BBQ with up to 25 cars to follow, thankfully they were able to change to the lower carpark & so most of the competitors arrived oblivious to the potential chaos which was averted!! Thanks to Bobby O’Connor for his help with this.There were lots of families and juniors in action on Tuesday night and again the picnic tables adjacent to the car park were busy for post run refreshments. This weeks short course took a fairly easy outing along the main forest track looping back to the carpark - resulting in some very fast times. The long course was diverted into the forest early on and had some criss-cross legs bringing competitors up, down, back up & finally down again to finish out on the same loop as the short course for the last 4 controls. An uphill start was order of the day and both courses shared the 1st control, the long course then diverted off the track to head further into the forest to pick up the lone tree in a nice white section. No.3 was back down to the road & up to the turning circle, then began a series of controls which proved tricky for some competitors on the night. The 4th control looked like an easy one head up to stone wall/forest corner keeping the block of the fight to the east & then had the option of following the ride (containing lines of full flowered foxgloves) or else stay running along the forest boundary wall to the corner before dropping down to the boulder. Downhill run to no 6 across the recently opened up ground to a tucked in wall corner no.6 with just a few brambles here making the right line of attack to the control essential.

Some road running followed on to 7 & 8 and maybe here people thought it felt long which could be explained by the 1:10 000 scale map. On to 9 uphill to a lone tree was straight forward enough before again what felt like a much longer leg through the forest to the clearing at no.10 - some ducking needed here to avoid some low branches but visibility was good and the clearing was obvious once you came to forest corner. Best way to 11 was straight down hill to the road whereas if you went direct once could have been slowed by the some rougher going. Moving on to the homeward stretch no. 12 was perched on the NW edge of the nice forest block overlooking the cleared area below & on then along the road but one needed to keep an eye out for 14 & 15 as it would have been easy enough to pass by then when motoring to the finish.On the long course, it was an unexpected visitor on the night diverting from his Kerry base on his way home from work who took the title. Darren Burke is one of the clubs best orienteers, a regular prize-winner at Irish Champs & has competed for Ireland for many years and clocked a very impressive time of 22:30. Liam Cotter went out late & had a very quick run to take 2nd place in a time of 26:11, pipping his fellow club-mate Darragh Hoare by some 30 seconds who finished in 26:44.Last weeks lady winner Aoife O’Sullivan had to settle for 2nd place in 35:18 as West Cork based Emer Perkins ran a stormer finishing in 30:38 which was an excellent 5th place Overall on the night. Caroline Murray took 3rd place place a little further back in 37:06.Over the 2.3km short course - we may have seen the fastest times of this years league yet. Isaac Bosonnet raced around in just 13:52 ahead of his sister Chiara who completed the course in 15:28 and she was followed by the consistent Fionn & Eve Buckley who took 3rd place again this week in a time of 16:34.Well done to all who participated on the night. Full individual results with split times are available at the following link:

http://www.orienteering.ie/result2?oaction=moreResult&id=22068

Special thanks this week to John Scannell for organising the event. Thanks also to Bobby O’Connor for co-ordinating the parking, Sinead O’Donoghue as starter and our control collectors on the night – Gerald Duffy & Una Buckley.

Next week we will be heading North to Corrin Hill near Rathcormac for the seventh event in our league.

http://www.corko.net/news-1/summerleague7corrinhillwoodfermoytuesdayjune25theventinfo

Remember you need to attend six events to complete the 2019 summer league and there are now just four more events left to improve your overall individual league standing.

Hope you can join us!