Discussion: I can’t wait for the next

13 daily instalments of this series.

only 12 now....

Presumably this is at home and not in a hotel (as you would be arriving in NZ at the moment) ?

Yes, at home. It's only for those returning from certain countries. France was put on the list at 0400 on Saturday. Hence why many people chose to miss day 5 of the OO Cup.

Is the NZ spike affecting you? From our perspective postponing the election looks a bit OTT.

The only difference for me so far is that we had to pre-enter last Sunday's orienteering so that they could ensure there weren't too many people together. OK for a small event but if we stay in this situation for a while, the NZ Champs may have to be postponed again as we're not allowed more than 100 gathering at any one time. A bit tougher in Auckland - Susan was supposed to be working up there a couple of days this week, but that's been called off.

As for the election, I think most people agree with the decision. It was only 4 weeks away and all the politicians had to stop campaigning as soon as the new restrictions came in.

Oceania still not cancelled... I'm clinging onto that thought at the moment.

Our esteemed PM seems to suggest not, taking about mid next year before he'll allow us out, even just to cross the ditch.

I've personally given up any hope of going to NZ next year. Just can't see them letting us in.
I'm just hoping we get some sort of domestic season next year. Especially the Scottish 6 Days.

Scottish 6-Days is looking reasonably likely to happen just now - but not sure what will happen this autumn as numbers seem to be rising everywhere...

...but will you be taking entries from England? ;-)

Especially from dirty Bradford

Depends... ;-)

And yet British Orienteering keeps tweeting “what orienteering have you got planned this weekend?” Answer: None!! There is none! Not unless I fancy running around a permanent course at a bit of local parkland, and call me a terrain snob but that doesn’t fit into my definition of ‘orienteering’. Grr. It’s all so tedious!

@BrandNewMe: There's no rule against joining multiple clubs (only about competing for them) - MOR currently has 12 courses out in Culbin, Altyre and Quarrelwood, an event at Darnaway next month and no club membership fee :-)

There is the odd event happening in England which is open to anyone. However with the restriction of 40 starters per hour per start (and 2 starts max) it's pretty limited. I note that SLOW have 250 entries for their event on 13th Sept already. That's over 3 hours of start block so I suspect they won't be taking many more entries.
I, along with many others I suspect, wonder whether it's really worth the effort required to put on an event under the current restrictions.
Let's hope we can get back to some sort of normality some time soon...

Scottish events are now open to non-club members, although numbers have to be managed to ensure no more than 30 in one place (e.g. at the start).

Plannng at Culbin and Darnaway is never that much of a chore :-)

Where did they get the 40 per hour figure from? I'm assuming gov guidelines make some sort of restriction on numbers gathering outdoors and this is an overly-cautious demonstration of compliance.

I suspect the 10 per 15 minutes rule is related to golf where we start in groups of 4 every 8 or 10 minutes. Not sure why that would be relevant...

They did use golf as the example I believe. The main reason being to stop too many congregating on anyone place e.g. the start, which I assume is the equivalent to the first tee.

How many is too many?

With longer start lanes, 30sec start intervals, more start boxes (5), you could start 20 people in a ten minute block, add a five minute break between blocks and that's double the number per quarter hour without compromising physical distancing.

You can have more than one start. The army event I went to last week had two starts, although they were only 20m apart, so means can have more people

With a three hour start window, you can accomodate max 120 competitors so with two starts that will be less than 240 total (because entries not evenly spread across courses).

Am thinking of pushing the boundaries of what constitutes ‘elite’ and running in some nice lakes races at the start of October. How do we define elite?

If you find out let me know.
Jealous of the juniors getting to run at Graythwaite this weekend...

Claire - 9th on the BOF rankings, or 10th Brit on IOF rankings, that should do it. Although I did also hear you had to be 21/35 to be eligible....

Ageist bastards!

I'm in my 21st year as an M35. Will that do?
Alternatively I may have to enter Mikey ;-)