The Original Urban Orienteering

[graeme]

http://vimeo.com/44269289

Yet another record field for the 34th Edinburgh 7-hills race today. At one stage this was the top result when googling "Urban Orienteering". As for uncrossable walls - take a look at 9mins. They must be doing something right?

PS Can you spot the 2013 British Orienteering Champion?

[usuallylast]

When the camera panned left by the steps near the beginning, I thought it was going to show them all charging onto the bus!
I'll stick with orienteering - looking for the controls takes my mind off the pain..

[Paul Frost]

I'm intrigued as to how it was a top result on Google.
It's clearly not orienteering as there were no maps or controls, and not exactly urban given the amount of green stuff they ran on.
Still, an interesting variant on the "map memory" type training events.

I'm not sure if it's a good thing for the event to liken itself to urban orienteering. But I guess it's a better image for people to see when they think of orienteering rather than a bunch of bearded blokes with boots and rucksacks though.

[SeanC]

Google now uses information about you to decide what is the top result. So what is top in your browser might not be for other people.

http://bgr.com/2013/05/15/google-io-2013-search/

I guess if you clear out all your cookies and make sure you haven't logged in to gmail etc it might give different results, but then they might be caching previous searches from your IP address and using that too.

(apologies if this is a bit geeky )

[AndyC]

This popped up on my fb account I found it another good orienteering video to watch http://youtu.be/Qya4hrSKYJk

[Angry Haggis]

I think Graeme's point was that, 8 years back or, so, the concept of Urban Orienteering as we know it now didn't exist - the two events I knew of (Venice Street Race and the York Park Race) didn't use the term. So if there's a race like this that is urban, and maybe someone mentioned in a forum that it was a bit like orienteering, then Google may have joined the terms together back then and put it at the top - simply because we (orienteering community) hadn't got around to calling our own events that.

By the way I would be interested to know what site people get at the top now when they Google "Urban Orienteering" (with or without the quotes). Note that even if you are logged out of Google, it will still use your IP address to tailor the results, so it's actually quite difficult to get an "impartial" search through it these days. York renamed their Park Race to a City Race only in 2011, and Venice still refer to theirs as the Venice Street Race or MOV.

[The Loofa]

London City Race for me
(but then I suppose it would)

[Spookster]

By the way I would be interested to know what site people get at the top now when they Google "Urban Orienteering" (with or without the quotes).

I get the British Orienteering page advertising the Dorking urban race on 6 May. (http://www.britishorienteering.org.uk/s ... 2013/urban)

[dch]

I get Nopesport Urban Orienteering League (urbanleague.nopesport.com) from Google.

But when I then tried Bing, the first result was for a geology equipment supplier who apparently also sell things like control flags and pin punches; this also appeared as a ad for a few other orienteering related searches that I tried.

[graeme]

I think Graeme's point was that, 8 years back or, so, the concept of Urban Orienteering as we know it now didn't exist

One of several points. The others being
1/ that the 7-hills was happy to use the O-word in its advertising (less so now...).
2/ that even with an unchanged format and route in 34 years, it's getting record numbers.
3/ that the emphasis is on fun and freedom, not fairness and "perceived safety".

n.b. fairness: nobody ever got DQed. "Perceived safety": numerous road crossings; no traffic incidents.

There is a map, which some people carry, available from previous race-sponsors here: Being made by orienteers, it's rather more useful than anything used for RunChallenge

[mikey]

http://vimeo.com/44269289

Yet another record field for the 34th Edinburgh 7-hills race today. At one stage this was the top result when googling "Urban Orienteering". As for uncrossable walls - take a look at 9mins. They must be doing something right?

PS Can you spot the 2013 British Orienteering Champion?

Can't help feeling the guy at 7 minutes is taking the wrong route and wearing the wrong shoes. Maybe a map would have helped?

[denbydale]

Using Bing - it comes up with the Calgary Corporate Challenge

http://www.calgarycorporatechallenge.co ... html?id=20

[alanbrett]

I too get Nopesport Urban Orienteering League when using Google.

On Bing I get todo.bwir.de/urban-orienteering which turns out to be a dating website

followed by a few Youtube videos on urban orienteering

On DuckDuckGo I get the Calgary Corporate Challenge
http://www.calgarycorporatechallenge.co ... html?id=20

While the first two results from Blekko cannot be found, but the third is
http://www.straight.com/summer-city-gre ... g?mobile=1

The last two search engines must think I am in Canada!

[NeilC]

The last two search engines must think I am in Canada!

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=ilford+ ... CAgQ_AUoAg

[graeme]

There's something oddly familiar about some of those North Americans...

http://urbanchallengerace.com/