Ioco WJR 2-Day Why Just Run
May 30th 2026 10:00am - May 31st 2026 2:00pm
Organizers: Stan Woods (Event Director), Daniel Coombs (Course Planner), Joanne Woods (Membership), Adam Woods (Assistant), Reuben Ford (Assistant), Felix Lawrence (Assistant), Scott Muma (Assistant), Bruce Rennie (Assistant), Alistair Howard (Coach)
Come and enjoy two days of orienteering in the Ioco area. Adult entry fees are $15 per day (event). If you want to attend both days, you must register for each day. Much of the map is runnable open forested terrain, with rich contour, stream, marsh and rock features. A very enjoyable area to orienteer, a map not to be missed. The courses on Saturday May 30th will be generally shorter in distance (and time) and because they cover parts of the map with more trails and roads will be slightly less challenging from a forest orienteering perspective.
Doing the Saturday event will be good practice in reading and interpreting the Ioco map and forest terrain and improve your performance on Sunday.
The courses on Sunday May 31st will be generally longer in distance (and time) than Saturday and will cover parts of the map with fewer trails and roads and hence will be more challenging from a forest orienteering perspective. To help you stay in contact with the map both the Saturday and Sunday courses will have generally more controls than you would typically see on comparable length forest courses.
Saturday May 30th schedule:
9:00 – Earliest time to enter access gate to parking lot.
9:20 – Registration opens to confirm SI number and course.
10:00 - First starts. People with less forest orienteering experience should start early.
11:00 - Final start.
13:00 - Course closes for Everyone.
May 30 courses are all at a map scale of 1:7500 with a 5-meter contour interval. On May 30 the Expert and Elite Courses will have butterfly loops (see description below).
Courses: The two shortest courses, in order from easiest to most difficult (technical and physical) are as follows:
·Intermediate - Mostly on trails, and relatively short. A combination of controls on trails, and near trails (and hence Technical Difficulty 3). Due to the compexity of the trails, and the complexity of the terrain there is NO course offered for solo Beginners or Novices. The Intermediate course is the ‘easiest’ course and is only suitable for beginners or novices in groups of two or more. If possible, younger experienced forest orienteers should run with a partner (or be shadowed by an experienced adult). This is a good course for adults who have some orienteering experience in city parks and urban areas and know how to use a compass but are new to forest orienteering.
·Short Advanced - This course has a Technical Difficulty of 4 as it has less climb and is less physically demanding than the longer courses. This may, be a suitable course for experienced forest orienteers who want a course that challenges their technical forest orienteering skills but is shorter and less physically demanding.
Sunday May 31st schedule:
9:00 – Earliest time to enter access gate to parking lot.
9:20 – Registration opens to confirm SI number and course.
10:00 - First start. People with less forest orienteering experience should start early.
11:00 - Final start.
14:00 - Course closes for Everyone.
The 3 shorter courses on May 31 are at a map scale of 1:7500 with a 5-meter contour interval. The Elite course is at a map scale of 1:10,000 with a 5-meter contour interval.
May 30 Butterfly Loops (Expert and Elite courses)
On May 30 the butterfly loops for the Expert and Elite courses are different. Butterfly loops is a group of controls forming 2 loops with a common start and end control in the middle. The 2 loops resemble the wings of a butterfly, thus the name butterfly loops. The loops are different lengths and each will take 4-15 minutes to complete. All the competitors on the same course (Expert or Elite) will complete both loops but the order will vary; half the competitors will run the right-most loop first while the other half starts with the left-most loop. Thus, for half the competitors (on the same course) the pattern looks like this (an example, not from the actual course):
while the other half sees it as this:
Note that each competitor has to punch the common control 3 times: first when you enter the butterfly, a second time when you have completed the first loop, and finally a 3rd time when you have completed the 2nd loop.
The common control will be marked with 3 numbers stacked up on your map, it will be duplicated 3 times on your control description sheet, and it will be programmed in the e-punch scoring to require 3 punches. We expect that this will be easy to forget, since it will seem like once you've found the control you shouldn't need to visit it again, but because the two wings are of different lengths, the multiple punching is a necessary requirement to balance the two variants of the butterfly. So please remember to punch the common control 3 times.
Why Just Run
What should I bring? Wear something comfortable that you don't mind getting a little dirty! If it's wet outside, you might want to consider a change of shoes and socks! A compass is optional (we have extra ones for borrowing). For added safety, a whistle is mandatory for all GVOC events. Read more in the WJR Introduction to Orienteering.
How much does it cost? Regular "Why Just Run:" events cost adult: $15 / under 20: $10/ family discount (adult(s) with children) 40% (we now accept credit and debit cards on site). Some special events may cost a little more, and this will be made clear in the event detail above. Annual club membership is also required.
Club membership: See details on the club home page. Please complete before your first event!
Refunds: If a participant is unable to attend an event for any reason the event organizer may refund the event fees (at their discretion) but the processing fees will not be refunded. If an event is changed or cancelled by GVOC and participants request a refund, the processing fees will be refunded.