Yep Sport

Maps and Courses, the Mac Way

Thursday 3 July 2008 by Ollie

I’ve just sent off my first “proper” orienteering map to the printers.

The process was slightly convoluted:

• Survey done by annotating OS base map and taking photographs. Averaged 3ha per hour.
• Cartography done in Adobe Illustrator CS3 on Mac OS X. Used my photos, annotations, Google aerial photos and MS Birds Eye (oblique) photos. Averaged about 0.5ha per hour.
• Rough GIF file of the map created.
• Course planning done in Purple Pen Beta 2 (running on Windows XP).
• Leg running-distance calculations done using Quantum GIS 0.10 and some shapefiles of the buildings/streets. This step could be made easier if I georeferenced my GIF raster and used that instead.
• Exported the courses from Purple Pen as OCAD files.
• Moved the map file so that OCAD couldn’t find it, so just shows the courses.
• Bespoke edits, such as numbering changes, in OCAD 9.6 Demo (not saved, but can export)
• Exported the courses from OCAD in EPS (Encapsulated Postscript) format.
• Back on the Mac, placed the courses as a layer on top of the map.
• Saved the whole thing - created a PDF of it as back-up.
• Sent for printing.

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QM Race - Map Done

Tuesday 1 July 2008 by Ollie

A week until the event. The map is done, now it needs to be edited and corrected!

Here’s a MOO card for the event that I designed, and would have bought to promote it, except it would have taken too long to be delivered

Hope you like it! I might do one of these for the City Race.

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One Map, One Week

Wednesday 25 June 2008 by Ollie

I’ve set myself the challenge of drawing a complete ISSOM sprint map in seven days.

The event is on the evening of Tuesday 8 July and it’s a sprint race at the Queen Mary (University of London) Mile End Campus, and Mile End Park, which is immediately to its east. The fast running through the ceremonial park should counterbalance the intricate sprint terrain in the university campus.

Anyone who thinks it’s a “bit grim” out in East London is going to be in for a pleasant surprise if they come along. It’s a great little area.

The total area of the map is 30 ha (10 ha on the campus and 20 ha in the park) - it fits nicely on an A4 sheet at 1:4000. I had planned to make it fit on an A5 sheet but got my scale calculations wrong.

Here’s my progress so far.

Day 1: Surveyed 14 ha, drawn 7 ha.
Day 2: Surveyed 6 ha, drawn 4 ha.
Day 3: Surveyed 4 ha, drawn 3 ha.
Day 4: Surveyed 0 ha, drawn 3 ha.
Day 5: Surveyed 6 ha, drawn 5 ha.
Day 6: Surveyed 0 ha, drawn 3 ha.

Once again, I’m using Adobe Illustrator with MapStudio to do the drawing.

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Jukola

Sunday 15 June 2008 by Ollie

1:55am here - and it’s already getting light in Finland (3:55am) there.

Maybe time to get some sleep…

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An Uneven Distribution of Orienteering Events

Wednesday 11 June 2008 by Ollie

timbean talks about Orienteering Blackholes - places in the UK where not much goes on - at least this time of year - in terms of events.

Looking at my Map of Orienteering Events, there certainly are some interesting patterns - the icons show events happening in the next ten weeks. The big clusters are around London, the Severn Estuary, and the Peak District. Hardly anything is going in East Anglia (possibly due to vegetation at this time of year), North Wales, or Hampshire/Dorset.

Surprisingly, very little is happening in Scotland either - considering that Scotland remains in condition until later in the summer, and that the best terrain in the UK is up here, it is odd that so little is going on. Maybe the Scots are bad at registering their events with the BOF, from which the map is largely derived? I certainly know some of the SE region clubs are, because I supplement the official listings with information gleaned from club websites - for the London area only.

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Trail Challenge

Saturday 17 May 2008 by Ollie

Last Tuesday was the first Trail Challenge of 2008, organised by SLOW, in Bushy Park, one of London’s Royal Parks. I volunteered to be course planner, to get some planning and organisational experience ahead of a couple of races I will hopefully be putting on later this year. This meant I didn’t get to run, as I was out putting out controls and guarding them. However, it was a good opportunity to take some photographs on what was another warm and pleasant summer’s evening.

As is traditional for the Bushy Park race, the route included an (optional) water splash, which I was surprised to see most (~70%) of competitors taking - as it was early in the race, and not that shallow!

The first control was also quite a spectator friendly one - beside the Duck Pond. The local residents (i.e. the aforementioned ducks) weren’t too happy with the crowd of runners suddenly appearing, and noisily reclaimed their spot once the racers had moved on. The park was, as usual, brimming with wildlife, with several large herds of deer providing an unmarked obstacle. I also spotted a few regal swans and a large heron.

More details about the race - you can also see the routes I planned from here.

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London to Brighton

Friday 16 May 2008 by Ollie

My housemate, who has only recently taken up cycling, cycled from London to Brighton on Sunday. Can’t be having that! So, I set off on Wednesday afternoon, quite late in the day, from home, with the aim of hopefully getting to Brighton, or at least a long way out of London, by sunset.

I did it! Although it did get pretty dark at the end. My route was exactly 100km, and took just over 5 hours moving time - adding in my many stops at traffic lights in London, a number of short rest breaks and a long (30 minute) break for lunch, I took 6h 20m. This was my longest ever day bike-ride - beating my 87km from Weston-super-Mare to Bath a couple of years ago.

My route was copied from Adrian Fitch’s website: See here for the route, which I converted to TCX using the extremely excellent Bike Route Toaster and programmed it into my Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS, which then gave turn-by-turn instructions, with a countdown and a satisfying beep as I passed each junction. Apart from a couple of missed turns which I was soon alerted to, it worked very well - just as well, as I deliberately didn’t bring a map.

My route was very similar to the 2007 London to Brighton “official” cycle ride route, apart from my 13km prologue to get to the start. The only apparent differences are: (a) I cut off the Garratt Park corner just after Clapham Common, (b) I bypassed Hayward’s Heath to the east taking a route through Wivelsfield Green, and (c) I went over, rather than around, Hollingbury Hill on the outskirts of Brighton.

The worst section was going through south London - very stop-start. Carshalton, which I’ve never been to before, was very pretty though. There were a few big hills - getting through the North Downs, up Turner’s Hill, and up Ditchling Beacon, were the most notable ones. After the highest point (224m) it was a very nice, fast descent down into Brighton. I got caught in one rain shower, going through Ditchling village, but it stopped as I started the big ascent. It was pretty much dark as I hit the outskirts of Brighton. I’m pleased that I didn’t have to walk the bike up Ditchling Beacon - I was expecting it to be The Ultimate Challenge but it really wasn’t too bad in the end.

Taking my time from Clapham Common, which is where the official race starts (although their route is, as noted, slightly different) I did the 87 km in around 4h 25m, although this doesn’t include stops/breaks - with them, I took 5h 36m.

Next up will have to be the 2007 TDF Stage 1 route - although at >200km, I think I’ll need to do a truncated version.

My photos.

Red is >25km/h, Blue is <15km/h

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Brill

Saturday 10 May 2008 by Ollie

This Tuesday, I headed off to Oxford for an informal evening event put on by TVOC at Brill village. The event is held every year, and I’ve been quite a few times in the last few years. Unfortunately Brill is not an easy village to get to - long ago, the London Underground used to stretch out that far - these days it’s a train out to Oxford, then an hour long cycle ride eastwards, over several hills and through several picturesque villages, before a final 80m ascent into the village itself. There are two things I always remember about Brill - the windmill and the nettles. This year, the nettles weren’t too bad, and the windmill looked very picturesque in the warm evening sunlight.

The map is another interesting thing about this race. Brill has a huge village common - bigger than the village itself. Part of the common extends right down the hill. The map is drawn, rather uniquely, with a contour interval of 1.67 metres. This year, the map was pre-printed (although we were still using pin-punches.) The map almost fits onto an A5 sheet, at 1:5000, so it really is a small area.

The race format was a mass-start, three loop race. Having arrived exhausted, and slightly late, I was allowed a breather before heading off into the common. The effect of three loops over the same area meant that the common was pretty thoroughly visited, as the aerial photograph of my race shows:

The colours correspond to my heart-rate. A couple of features stand out - the climb to the finish/loop changeover point with me finding the climb tough (red) every-time I approached it, and my extended pause (blue-green) at the northern end of the course, when I thought I had missed out an earlier control.

For some reason, the weather is always very nice for the Brill race. Hopefully next year’s will continue in the tradition.

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Spring

Friday 9 May 2008 by Ollie

Oops, I forgot that my Twitter account posted all my updates on this blog - hence all the recent posts aren’t very substantive.

Just a quick update on the City of London orienteering map work. Here’s the progress so far:

View Larger Map

The grey areas are the remaining bits, I’m hoping to get them done in June. Green are the nicest areas, red the worst.

Here’s the events I’m hoping to do soon:
13 May pm - SLOW Trail Challenge at Bushy Park (planning)
17 May - JOK Chasing Sprint at Bloom Wood (helping+running)
20 May pm - TVOC Summer Series at Park Wood
26 May - EBOR Park Race at York
5 June pm - LOK Local at Hampstead Heath
7 June - WRE Sprint at Shrewsbury
8 June - HOC National at Brown Clee
10 June pm - TVOC Summer Series at Wittenham Clumps

As always, my map of forthcoming orienteering events is an invaluable planning tool!

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