Orienteering meets art in Trafalgar Square

On Friday September 11th 2009 Adrian had his hour of fame on top of the 1.7m (wide) x 4.4m (long) x 8m (high) fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square as part of Antony Gormley's One&Other project. This provides a chance for 2400 people (one an hour for 100 days) to occupy the fourth plinth and do whatever they want. Brooner came up with the great publicity angle that this could be the world's smallest orienteering event. Around 20 other orienteers and even a few members of the public took the chance to run in the first orienteering event to be held in Trafalgar Square.

The whole thing was broadcast live on the internet, as indeed all 2400 hours of the project will be. Looking at the coverage afterwards it may have been a bit difficult to work out what was happening at the time, and even if you were there it wasn't immediately obvious. Adrian was so far above us that it was quite hard to communicate, especially over the noise of the fountains. The theory was that he would run a course on the plinth and then someone would run the equivalent course in the square. It soon became obvious that this was a bit difficult to synchronise so it turned into more of a straight relay.

The extra complication was that each course would outline a letter and everything would be recorded on a GPS watch that was passed from runner to runner, and if we got everything right then we would spell out a message. Alan Leakey was given the job of official starter and a set of maps with courses labelled O, N, E, &, T, H, R, P, L, I and G. His job was then to hand these out in the right order to spell the message. Orienteers from London Orientering Klubb, South London Orienteers, Southdowns Orienteers, Hertfordshire Orienteering Club, Chigwell Orienteering Club, Havering and South Essex Orienteering Club, Saxons Orienteering Club, South Midlands Orienteering Club and possibly a couple of clubs I didn't spot took part. The South Midlands runner was Roger Williams, who had already had his own hour on the plinth a few days earlier.

Discussions with Adrian before the event had concluded we had a chance of managing "ONE & OTHER PLINTH O" in the one hour available, but the unofficial target was to try to manage "ONE & OTHER PLINTH ORIENTEERING". As we came towards the end of the hour we had got to the T in orienteering, but Alan was desperate to finish off. The bright yellow cherry picker drove up to get Adrian down and replace him with the next plinther, but we relocated the start and finish a few metres and continued around it. I spotted that we could stop at "ORIENTEER" and that would still make sense, and even provide a better reference to the person who had started all this off in the first place. And so at just past 14.00 I set off on the final R, telling each control holder as I passed that we had finished. In total we had run 24 courses covering 8.56 kilometres in 52:47.

After the event it was simply a matter of downloading the GPS track and extracting the message. The good news was that we had a full trace from the whole race. The bad news was that my vague idea of doing something in Routegadget to extract the letters didn't really work. After some experimentation the final method turned out to involve quite a complicated process as follows:

1) Read GPS trace from Garmin Forerunner 205 using SportTracks and create a GPX file for each letter.

2) Import each GPX file into QuickRoute and use this to create a JPG image showing the letter. QuickRoute had the nice extra that allows the colour at any point to indicate how fast you are running. Thus green sections show bits where people were moving fast, whilst red is slow.

3) Use IrfanView to do a batch conversion of the JPG files. This provided an easy way to crop and resize all 24 letters without doing it painfully one at a time.

4) Create a 9 by 3 Word table and import the JPG letters into this for final printing.

And so as a contribution to the art created in association with this project we come to the final result, as shown below.

The start and finish are at the bottom left of each letter, and this means courses have to be planned so they don't go through this point. That explains why the E is backwards, the T is on its side and the L is upside down.

A few related links:

• Trafalgar Square map and courses.
• Maprunner photos.
• Photos by Ali Hooper who ran the first letter O.
  
• Maprunner video.
• Adrian's blog.
• Photos by Roger Williams.
  

Tower, 52m, northern foot

Any suggestions where this might be? I guess it's not really that difficult to work out that it is Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square. Tomorrow the general public will be getting the chance to orienteer around the square when Adrian Bailey spends an hour on the fourth plinth as part of the One & Other project. Helen and I have been helping to set things up so I am mapper and planner and Helen is organiser for what promises to be an interesting experience. We're still not quite sure exactly what will happen, but we have maps, control flags and SI kit so it should look like a proper race. Brooner has found an interesting publicity angle, claiming it to be the World's smallest orientering event.

You can get a sneak-preview of the map in Routegadget.

If you can't be there, don't miss the live web broadcast from 13.00 to 14.00 BST.

And that should provide a perfect warm-up for the 2009 London City Race on Saturday.

City of London Orienteering Race

What an event. If you haven't seen it I recommend starting by looking at the map and courses in Routegadget and then seeing gg's video. Then there are the results plus lots of pictures, discussion and comments from officials on the official event web site.

The map, produced by Ollie O'Brien, is a pure work of art. There laid out in front of you is the whole City of London, from the remains of the Roman walls (in the olive green just north of control 135) to St Paul's Cathedral (control 151) to modern skyscrapers such as the Gherkin (control 137).

This was a chance to orienteer around the streets of London, which on its own would have made a great day out. The street network is not particularly complex, but it is good enough to make the navigation interesting, and around every corner you find a view of some well-known building to distract you. The start and finish were in Broadgate Arena next to Livepool Street Station (as shown in the photo of prizegiving on the left). The majority of the 400 competitors arrived by public transport and could sit in the warm sunshine while they waited to start or to discuss route choices after they had finished.

But the added element on top of all that was the final few controls spread around the Barbican Centre. The is spread over multiple levels, and proved a real challenge to map. Never before have so many people been so confused by so few controls.

It's also worth looking at Ollie's web site where he explains some of the technology behind the race.

Don't Miss This

I spent last Saturday checking control sites for the City of London Orienteering Race on October 11th. All the photos in the mosaic on the left were taken from somewhere on one of the courses. Despite having lived and worked in London for over 25 years I still visited places I had never been to. At one point I was in a deserted maze of narrow alleyways behind the Bank of England when a lone runner came round the corner at high speed. It was Brooner, the Event Organiser, out test-running the long course. I said these alleyways were just like Venice. He thought it was like Istanbul. In future you can say that other places are just like the City of London. Ten minutes later I met him again in a deserted churchyard. The map is a true work of art on its own.

Don't miss it. This will be something special.

Click here for an enlarged version of the picture.

Planning for London 2012

There was an article in The Times today that looked at preparations for the equestrian events at the 2012 Olympics. These will be held in Greenwich Park, which is home to the Greenwich Royal Obervatory and also happens to have an orienteering map. It's not the most interesting park from an orienteering point of view, but it does have some contours and the views are truly spectacular.

The article discussed the planning for the cross-country stage of the three day event:

Benson, who rode competitively for 22 years, representing Great Britain in three European Championships, has established an outstanding reputation for fashioning courses and said that Greenwich is a “designer’s dream” because of the varied possibilities. “At this stage you have to have the imagination, thinking what you would have in a perfect world,” she said. “Then you have to be realistic.”

The complexity of laying out a cross-country course has meant that Benson has been appointed six years ahead of time. She can begin work on such ideas as whether it will be possible for the horses to go between the colonnades near Queen Anne’s house, or jump on and off the bandstand, and whether the Royal Parks will allow them to leap the hedges in the Rose Garden.

Paths will have to be covered, either by artificial or natural turf, and there is an existing pond for possible use as a water jump, one of the maximum of 45 jumping efforts that the horse has to make on the course of up to 6,270 metres. Always, Benson said, the horses’ benefit has to be a prime consideration. The hills must not be too steep for too long, the turns not too tight and obstacles must not be placed close to trees because the shadows could confuse the animals.

The comparison with the orienteering planning process struck me immediately. I then decided it would be interesting to see if we could run the Olympic three day event course as an orienteering race at some stage. And then I started thinking again about all the other opportunities that the Olympics will bring, even though there will clearly be no orienteering at the Games themselves. That doesn't stop us putting on events before and after to capitalise on the publicity and make use of some of the new facilities that will exist. Several of us in the South East have already been thinking about various ideas, but I'm not aware of any overall co-ordination yet. Maybe I need to suggest something to someone. Watch this space.