May Social 2022Liberton & Alnwickhill, Tuesday 17 May
The May social featured an urban orienteering event, plus foot Turf event, followed by a social with World Orienteering Day cake. Mark Rowe recounts the story of the evening, including results.
Mark reports:
"A super night was had by all who attended the celebration of World Orienteering Day mixed with some score orienteering and a foot Turf event. Certainly something for everyone, with attendees including club members, some from neighbouring clubs and Turfers all enjoying the party atmosphere. We successfully demolished the large, delicious, sign-written cake, sang 'Happy World Orienteering Day to us', wore party hats and generally had a good natter - all led by the party-master Walter! The weather was mostly dry during the events, but we took advantage of inside the Toby Carvery Liberton for the social element and then some of us got caught out by the torrential rain on the way home.
The orienteering element was a 60-minute score format planned by Alison, won by Paul Caban who visited all 30 controls with 7 minutes to spare, with the leading lady being Helena Nolan. A twist was that all the controls had a 2-letter code on them which provided the initials to famous authors. Rachel Fawthrop was the most successful at deciphering these, not easy following an hours run! Each won a natty pencil sharpener incorporating a globe, ideal for larger scale worldwide orienteering events!
The 3rd ESOC organised foot Turf event saw some competitive action amongst the 15 entrants as they strove to take (and hold onto) as many of the 50 zones as possible. It takes 30 seconds to “take” a zone, and then it is “blocked” for 3 minutes, so nobody else can visit it in that period. This means that as well as finding your way to the zones, you need to keep a close eye on other competitors, so that you can take zones off them / keep out of their way! You get points for taking zones, and also points for “holding” them, so if you successfully take zones and keep them, it can make all the difference to the leader board. Various strategies were employed, some choosing to stay on the Western margins of the event where the underfoot conditions were softer, others gambling on a greater density of zones in the planners own housing estate! The Northern zones incorporated some significant slopes for the unwary but provided the conundrum of potential increased points per hour (pph).
Throughout the hour it was neck-and-neck between ESOCWalter and Hodge (who was delayed at one point following an argument with a low hanging tree bough – fortunately no lasting damage) but ultimately ESOCWalter prevailed. The prizewinners were ESOCWalter as leading male and ESOC-HR for leading female. There were 2 junior prizes of bars of chocolate won for the older juniors by Lightinkorean and by CoolEsocAds for the younger juniors. We also managed to complete a Crowdy at the ‘BalmWell’ zone with 19 Turfers thus earning the Crowdy-13 medal for those who didn’t already have it."
The event map and full results are available on the ESOC FTT#3 Event page on the Turf website.
Details of how a Turf event works are in this document: Participating in a Turf Event
Thanks to Alison, Walter and Mark for putting on the fun event.