The Greater London Orienteering Summer Series (GLOSS) is a series of events run by the clubs in and around London and within the M25. It runs from through July and is a club competition (ie clubs compete to win the trophy) – but it operates a handicap system which strongly favours those with less experience (or none!) and who are younger or older – very often those contributing most to their club’s score are relative newcomers. So if you are a recently started orienteer, or even if you have never tried it, you will be welcome. It is a handicap series which aims to cater for beginners through to expert orienteers.
The races are on 5 successive weekends generally with start times between 10.00 and 11.30. Although they are inter-club races, they are open to all, including complete beginners who have never orienteered before and are not a member of any club. There is no need to pre-book, you just turn up and enter on the day.
There are 2 course options; the GLOSS (formerly named ‘frolic’) course which is usually about 3-5km and is of moderate (Light Green standard) navigational difficulty and a ‘Yellow’ course which is about 2km and with much easier navigation. In addition for those doing the GLOSS course, there is an optional ‘Extension’ to provide another 2-4 km.
The winning club each year carries off the prestigious London Bus Trophy – and it is always a closely fought battle!
For 2016 the handicap scoring system is (as in 2015) based on competitors’ BOF ranking list scores but it has been refined slightly and simplified. Your average BOF ranking points are used to provide your handicap. For each point over than 1000, you get a 5 second handicap. For each point less than 1000 your actual time is reduced by 5 seconds. So if your current ranking score is 2700 achieved at 3 ranking events, your average is 900 and you’ll get 100 x 4 seconds reduction in your time i.e. 6 minutes 40 seconds. If you took 45 minutes to complete the GLOSS course, your handicapped time will be 38:20. Easy!
If you don’t have BOF ranking points, you age, gender and experience are used to give you a notional ranking.
The new GLOSS event guidelines include details of the scoring scheme and the event format. This supersedes previous versions. The handicap times for all users is also now available.
The list of events for 2016 is as follows:
GLOSS Series
The Greater London Orienteering Summer Series (GLOSS) is now complete – with SLOW winning! The series is a series of events run by the clubs in and around London and within the M25. The clubs competed for the prestigious London Bus Trophy! The following were the events in the series
Sunday 3 July Nonsuch Park, Cheam MV GLOSS scoring MV Results page
Saturday 9 July Haberdashers’ Aske’s, Elstree HH GLOSS scoring HH Results page
Sunday 17 July Lloyd Park, East Croydon DFOK GLOSS scoring DFOK Results Page
Sunday 24 July Barnes Common, Barnes SLOW GLOSS Scoring SLOW Results Page
Sunday 31 July Alexandra Palace, North London LOK GLOSS Scoring LOK Results Page Routegadget “Commentary and series results
2016 Series results are available here
2015 Series results are here.
