Jo’burg orienteering club, Adventure Racing Club, held their first Summer Series event last night. It was very well attended with 83 participants – most not from the orienteering community.
These one-hour events are based on a point-score orienteering event format where participants receive a map on which many controls are marked. They can find these controls in any order, aiming to score as many points as possible in the time available. Entrants are mass started and the event runs between 18h00 and 19h00.
“We wanted to create a fun and social week-night event,” says AR Club’s Lisa de Speville. “Many people are interested in orienteering and in improving their navigation skills but with so many other events on weekends, they just never get to orienteering events.”
“In Jo’burg, even in summer, we don’t have very long evenings so we’ve squeezed a series of four events in from now until mid-February. By the last event it will start getting dark not long after 7pm.”
“We’re delighted with the turnout – especially as there were so many newcomers,” says de Speville. “There are sure to be even more next week.”
The club has posted a report, with results, on their website and photographs from the evening are on their Facebook page. People can pre-register for the next event on Wednesday, 29 January 2014 online.