PreO in 20 degrees below zero

 Ari - map creator,
course setter,
 race director,
 organizer etc.

PreO is not only a summer sport. January 6th Ari Tertsunen organized Aurora Borealis PreO at Vuosaari golf course right outside Helsinki. Aurora Borealis PreO has become a winter tradition in Finland, a competition where Ari is both mapper, course setter, race director, organizer etc.

The first Friday in 2017 was a cold day in Helsinki with a temperature between -21  and -23 degrees Celsius, but fortunately it was very little wind. The wind is bad in those temperatures.
- Some snow (15 cm) made the contour reading a little more difficult. I also had to remove some snow from the paths with my own hands the evening before at 2100 hours, Ari says.

Almost 30 people participated this cold day in January, a number Ari are satisfied with
- Naturally many people informed that it is too cold for them. Especially people with wheelchairs do not like that cold weather. Next year we maybe take Aurora Borealis to Canary Islands – or so.

In Aurora Borealis there is no participation fee, but that doesn't mean that the competition is a basic event. Ari made the map from scratch, using LIDAR data, ortophoto and some municipal street geometry. Even with good basic data, you need to use some hours at the terrain and a few hour beside the computer to make a good preo map. When the map is ready the next step is course setting both in the terrain and in OCAD.

The main course consisted of 22 controls and one time control with three tasks. Two participants had all controls correct, Antti Rusanen and Marko Määttälä. Antti was fasted at the time controls and brought the victory home.

Podium from left: Marko Määttälä (2.), Antti Rusanen (1.), Pinja Mäkinen (3.), Petteri Suominen (4.), Esko Junttila (5.), Ari Uotila (6.), Eero Hakanen (7.) and Juha Villikka (8.)

Ari have done a very impressive job with this competition. You can take a look at the maps and results in our archive. Next year maybe some competitors from outside Finland will come to Aurora Borealis PreO.

Try Trail-O online!

Libor Frost (CZE) has created a software where you can try the Trail-O variant TempO in your computer at home. If you are an experienced TrailO-er without the need to recap Trail-O rules, go directly to the last section. If you are not familiar with TempO (or Trail-O at all) we give you an short explanation here. For a more careful introduction, we refer to http://orienteering.org/trail-orienteering/:

In TrailO your task is to find the flag in the forest which corresponds to the circle on your map and the control description. You are not allowed to go out to the controls in the forest, but are restricted to stay on paths and roads. There are up to 5 flags for each task, and they are named A,B,C,D and E counting from the left from a marked viewpoint. Note that Z is also a possibility, which you answer if no flag is placed in the right position. There is a time limit on the full course, but as long as you don't exceed this limit, your time does not matter. 


TempO is a kind TrailO where time DOES matter. In this type of Trail-O you go up to a cluster with up to 5 flags. The time starts, and you are shown a map with only 1 circle and control description, and are supposed to answer the correct flag as fast as possible. As soon as you have answered you are given the next problem. There are normally 3-4 problems on each cluster. You are given 60 sec time penalty for a wrong answer.

This online version works mostly the same way as real-life TempO, only using a picture of the terrain instead of your own eyes. The software is running directly in the browser, so no download is required. As of now last year's World TempO Trophy is the only full course available, but the service will hopefully be updated with new maps and problems as people discovers this great software.

The online TempO training can be found here.

Libor also encourages people to good photos and the map of older TempO events. If you have such material available, please contact Libor on this e-mail address.

International Trail-O calendar

Almost all countries with competitors participating in WTOC and ETOC arrange national Trail-O competitions in their home country. In Europe there are several competitions every weekend, but finding an event is not the easiest task. Some national federations have Trail-O calendars on the official webpage, but not all competitions are found in there national calendars. If competitions all over the world where gathered in one international Trail-O calendar, the task of finding interesting events outside the neighboring countries would be simplified.

For this purpose we suggest the use of the easy-to-use event calendar found at cal.worldofo.com. This calendar provides an overview of where each event is held and gives the user the opportunity to include map samples and terrain pictures. The service also automatically provides links to existing maps and photos in the neighborhood. This is important information for every map-geek planning a trip to a foreign country, including a Trail-O competition. 

The calendar is in wide use for foot orienteering, and to some extend in use for the other disciplines of orienteering as well.

Click here to go directly to the calendar for Trail-O. If you use the link cal.worldofo.com, make sure to choose Trail-O under events type to show only Trail-O competitions.

We suggest that event planners of future Trail-O competitions use 10 minutes of their time to add their event to this calendar. Hopefully such an international calendar can generate more international competitors for events all across the world.

Norwegian Spring, 2nd- 3rd of April, in Norway is already added to the calendar. Hopefully other events planners will follow.

We will also mention the possibility to register your Trail-O competition in the calendar on Remo Madellas homepage.