Roberts Regional Recreation Area & Joaquin Miller Park
Date: (Sat.) Jul. 21, 2007
Location: Oakland, CA
Event Director: 
- 510.619.5728
Course Setters: Joe Scarborough, Bruce Wolfe
Type: C; Orienteering skills training in morning; potluck social lunch; White, Yellow, Orange, Sprint courses in afternoon
Join us on July 21 for orienteering skill training sessions and a club picnic. The event will be staged from the Huckleberry Picnic Area in Roberts Recreational Area near the main entrance. And, after all that, we will have new courses for all to enjoy—White, Yellow, and Orange, and a Sprint that will be counted toward the USOF Sprint ranking — in Joaquin Miller Park across the street on Skyline Drive.
Early in the morning, there will be training sessions in Roberts led by Steve Gregg, Ben Legg, and Jay Hahn for both beginners and intermediate/advanced orienteers. The first session for each will begin at 9:00 A.M. Another set of sessions will start at 10:30 A.M. More information on these sessions is below.
Lunch time from noon to 1:30 will find us enjoying food brought by many club members and YOU! Let's get together and celebrate our community of map runners/hikers with some great eats brought to share with others. There are grills available in the group picnic area. I will have some briquets for BBQing. Get to know some folks you haven't met before, and touch base with some you've known forever. There's always a lively discussion when club members socialize!
Registration for the courses will start at 1:30 and continue until 4:00 P.M. Starts will be run from 2:00 until 4:30. Courses will close at 6:00 P.M.
Information about the White, Yellow, and Orange courses is not yet available. Information about the Sprint course is available here.
I'm really looking forward to having lots of folks attend. Please contact about volunteering to help with the arrangements for the lunch (and for administering the courses). Let's see if we can't begin a tradition of an annual summer club picnic.
Rosemary Johnson
Driving Directions
From Highway 13 in the East Bay (the Warren Freeway), take the Joaquin Miller Road exit. Go uphill (east) on Joaquin Miller Road. Make a left at the next light onto Skyline Blvd. Go about a mile to the park entrance on the right.
There is an entrance fee of $5 per vehicle.
Training Sessions
Some of you may not be aware of the fact that part of the JMP/Roberts park extravaganza this coming Saturday consists of orienteering training sessions in the morning. This is the first time, as far as I know, that BAOC has ever attempted to hold training sessions in conjunction with a regular event. Jay Hann, Ben Legg (I hope), and I will be putting on these sessions, which are described below.
Ben's session is tentative, as he managed to injure himself last week, and is not sure right now if he'll be able to put on his training exercise as planned. If some of you more experienced orienteers plan to attend the meet anyway and would like to give Ben a hand with his pre-event setup, I'm sure he would appreciate it! You can email him directly with this . Thanks!
Also, as this is the first time we have attempted something like this, we have absolutely no idea how many people to expect at the trainings, and thus how many maps we should print out. So if you think you will be attending the training exercises Saturday, could you email me back to let me know that, and which trainings you plan to attend? That will help us get a better idea of how many bodies to expect.
The training write-ups are below. Feel free to email me with any additional questions.
Joaquin Miller Park Training Schedule
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Session One
Time: 9:00 A.M. to 10:00 A.M.
(1) For beginning/intermediate orienteers, Steve Gregg will lead participants on a "map walk". One of the keys to tackling more advanced orienteering courses is to be able to accurately read and interpret all the information that the map gives you. We will take a casual stroll through the woods at walking pace, with Steve as your tour guide. The walk will be 1.5 km in length, and there will be plenty of time to ask questions about everything you observe along the way. First-time orienteers are welcome to participate in this exercise, as are White, Yellow, and Orange runners wanting to learn some of the skills needed to move up to a more advanced course.
(2) For intermediate/advanced orienteers, Ben Legg will offer an exercise on distance and/or climb estimation. Here is Ben's write-up:
This exercise will be designed to take you beyond pace counting, and train you to use multiple techniques for estimating distance in the woods. A varied course will allow you develop a "feel" for distance in different terrain situations. I think the exercise will be readily accessible for intermediate orienteers, but will be excellent training for advanced orienteers as well. You will have a chance to calibrate your pace, visual estimation in the field, and visual estimation on the map. For advanced orienteers, we may also incorporate estimation of climb or detour size (time permitting). A stopwatch is recommended.
Session Two
Time: 10:30 A.M. to 11:30 A.M.
(1) For beginning/intermediate orienteers, Jay Hann will offer a map reading exercise. Here is Jay's writeup:
Orienteering is:
- 1) Where are you?
- 2) Where to do want to go?
- 3) How are you going to get there?
- 4) Do it!
This session will focus on #1, "Where are you?", as we do some hands-on map reading and learn how to "follow the map" as we move from place to place. No experience necessary. Bring a compass and some walking shoes. We'll be going over what a map is, how to orient the map, some basic map symbols, how a map can tell you what to expect, how to relate a map symbol with a real-life object.
(2) For intermediate/advanced orienteers, Steve Gregg has set a "point orienteering" course. I had never heard of this concept until it was explained to me a few weeks ago by Kent Ohlund. I will streamer a 1.5-km course in the woods, with 14 control points located at various spots on the streamered route. Runners will go out on this streamered course with a map that is completely blank except for the start triangle. They will be expected to mark or otherwise keep track of the location of the 14 control points as they work their way around the course. The purpose of the exercise is to give runners training in reading the map when moving at a faster pace than usual, and will also train "heads-up" running, as this will be needed to follow the streamered course. We will perhaps then have the participants run the course a second time, to observe their speed differential between "navigating" and "non-navigating" running.