On a crisp, sunny November day, around 220 people came out to Joe Grant County Park for some fall orienteering fun. The weather was ideal for orienteering (albeit chilly if you were standing around in sweaty clothes), and roughly 136 participants went out on the WYO courses, while 76 competitors shuttled up for the advanced courses. Below are the complete results; also be sure to check out the e-punch splits for the advanced courses.
The WYO courses had some fast times, and only two DNFs altogether. The Lenard family ran away with the White course, with a brisk time of 35:24. Przemek Mazur took Yellow in a speedy 55:28, and John Marshall captured Orange with an impressive 53.31. Some Orange participants felt that two controls (7 and 8) were a bit tough; this was intentional. These were true intermediate-level controls, placed in the latter part of the course to reward cross-country routes and careful navigation.
On the advanced courses, prerunners reported that the water on the Brown course (control #6) had frozen solid overnight. Luckily, the other two water stops were located higher on the hillsides and remained liquid, although the water was reportedly "freezing cold."
Thanks to e-punching, the advanced event went smoothly, with minimal organizational hassles. The only glitch was control 111 (#7 on red and blue, #8 on green), which had a malfunctioning timer, resulting in split times of over eight hours for some runners. Granted, the leg leading up to 111 was the "long leg" of the course, but it certainly wasn't intended to take all day to complete! (Luckily, the leg following 111 had a time warp that allowed them to make up the extra hours spent hunting down the previous control.) After the prerunners returned, we quickly identified the problem and programmed a replacement e-punch unit. Later runners had more reasonable splits, although reportedly the software clock that was used to program the replacement control had also drifted, and the new control's timer was still off by about 30 seconds from the rest of the units.
The courses generally drew high praise, combining a minimum of physical effort with a succession of orienteering challenges that required continuous thinking. The only drawback was the fact that we didn't have premarked maps ("archaic" was one observation - are we spoiled or what?). The inaccuracies of manual map copying caused a few wobbles, such as circles marked not quite in the right spot, and even some DNFs due to inadvertent control skipping. However, the majority of folks, although a bit rusty, haven't completely forgotten their map-copying skills yet.
Our few bobbles didn't go unnoticed by the press, however, and the AP (Asinine Press) published this report, to which one of the competitors, Mr. Mark Blair, swiftly responded (if only he ran courses so fast...).
On the Blue course, Syd Reader - one of the first starters and the second finisher of the day - had the time to beat with a fast run of 69:52. Nobody else managed to break the 70-minute barrier for the rest of the day, although Wyatt Riley came close with a second-place finish of 70:44.
The first finisher of the day, Matthias Kohler, appeared to be in the same position as Syd on the Red course, posting a time of 72:58. However, perpetual last starter Tapio Karras managed to defeat him just minutes before the courses closed with a time of 67:34. Derek Maclean, running a great race to post an even faster time, unfortunately missed his third-to-last control and ended up with a DNF. On the Green course, Lars Fjellbirkeland narrowly defeated Evan Custer by 25 seconds to claim first place with a time of 61:54. And, on Brown, Deron Van Hoff managed to edge out his competitors with a winning time of 59:47.
First and foremost, I'd like to thank my course-setters, Thorsten Graeve and Steve Beuerman, who doubled as assistant meet directors, each overseeing one of the course venues on event day. Thorsten started designing the advanced courses way back in February and lobbied hard to use the northeastern area of the map, convincing me that shuttles were a viable option (he was right!). He tweaked the courses up until the last day, and I think his careful course-setting (and compassionate climb ratio) was appreciated by all. Likewise, Steve put a lot of thought into his WYO courses, producing courses that were appropriately challenging without producing a lot of DNFs.
One of my biggest concerns was transporting the advanced orienteers to and from their remote venue. Evan Custer, Mark Rice, and Kelly Wells generously loaned their vans for the shuttle runs, and Olivia Graeve and Julie Wells spent all day shuttling people back and forth along the very curvy Mt. Hamilton Road, with Harold DeMoss also doing a lengthy shift. Thanks to them, all advanced runners got to the remote starts and we had no backups or complaints.
Because the WYO and advanced courses were in locations separated by a lengthy drive, I was concerned about having enough helpers at the WYO venue during peak event hours. Six gentlemen agreed to get up very, very early and pre-run their courses at 7:30 am so they could help afterward. Their sacrifice is especially noteworthy considering the temperature at that hour. Warm thanks to Syd, Doug, Van, Matthias, Dean, and Cecil.
Several other folks also put in extra effort for this event. Penny and Harold DeMoss arrived at 8:30 and worked all day - finishes and results, shuttle driving, even control pickup - despite having colds and deciding not to compete. James Scarborough vetted the Blue course and gave Thorsten detailed feedback that was quite helpful. And we need more volunteers like Erin Krueger, a new club member who emailed me a month before the event to offer her help, totally unsolicited!
Again, a big "thanks!" to everyone who made this Joe Grant meet a success:
WHITE 3.1 km, 40 m, 9 controls - 18 entries, 59 participants
1. Bill, Doug, & Alice Lenard 35.24
2. Andrea Daley, Tab Taber, Pete Haughney 40.23
3. Chris, Anna, Sarah, Neda 42.06
4. Jonathan & Kathy Harris 42.38
5. James, Fox, Meyer 43.35
6. Ku Ku Birds 1147 53.48
7. Randi Sprague, Diane Hall 53.57
8. Eve Kedar 56.12
9. Travelers 1147 57.38
10. Nova Morgan 61.35
11. Georgia, Ann-Christine, & Jeff Riker 62.27
12. Girl Scout Troop 1087 62.41
13. Kelly, Alyssa, & Janie Krag 63.40
14. Shawn Brady (6) 65.15
15. Peter Lubbers (2) 71.05
16. Amy Heches, Emily Allen 72.02
17. Kaitee, Lori, Carol, Lara (Ayyar & Eder) 99.07
Martha Apaza DNF
YELLOW 3.5 km, 95 m, 10 controls - 17 entries, 39 participants
1. Przemek Mazur 55.28
2. Ed Richards 57.46
3. Terence, Patrick, & Matthew Rabuzzi 64.07
4. Sundeep Abraham, Karl Qi, Ken Pu, Shu Chu 65.42
5. Rachel Care 69.54
6. Cool Guy Hiking Club (11) 71.14
7. Ryan & Kevin Pei, Scott Westbrook 73.25
8. Rains House, Stanford (6)
(Olga Troyanskaya & friends) 77.54
9. Steve Anderson 84.40
10. Wendy Yu, Rachel Lim, Ken Ma, Charles Cho 84.52
11. Alan, Susan, Ian, & Evan Pendleton 87.02
12. Galena Shakhnovsky 90.12
13. Al Berkowitz 101.25
14. Tom, Judy, Libby, & Nicole Cronin 105.28
15. Brian Richardson, Matt Blanck 106.20
16. John Albrecht 115.31
Second course:
Emily Allen, Amy Heches 88.54
ORANGE 4.9 km, 230 m, 10 controls - 24 entries, 38 participants
1. John Marshall 53.31
2. Albert Estrada, Rafael Ruiz 74.56
3. Tuyen Nguyen 75.56
4. Erin Krueger 77.49
5. Catherine Golden, Robert Doolen 81.47
6. Don & Stacy Palermini 88.09
7. Angelica Riley 90.20
8. Michael Sobczyk, Michael Pisanski 91.43
9. Scott Henderson 98.30
10. Jeff & Edward Boenig 101.03
11. Christine Shirley & Katie Anthony 112.37
12. Anna, Geoffrey, Andrew, Al Theiss 120.01
13. Grant Glouser 121.36
14. Judy Koehler 129.44
15. Eric Carlson & Jamie S. 137.10
16. Ron Thumann 139.26
17. Thomasina Ann Trautwein 144.41
18. Kevin Walker 156.04
19. Jack Myers 157.44
20. John Pagendarm 171.23
John Basbagill, Jim Robertson OT (84.56 - after 2 pm)
Kaiwen Kam, Andy Chang, Charles Lo OT (137.47 - after 2 pm)
Ed Landefeld OT (266.01 - over 3 hours)
Harry Hall, Kristen Pitsenbarger DNF
BROWN 3.5 km, 200 m, 8 controls - 23 entries
1 Van Hoff, Deron 59:47
2 Ramberg, Eric 1:01:06
3 Maclean, Steph 1:06:03
4 Gupta, Parag 1:11:42
5 Freund, Dwight 1:11:53
6 Donohue, Brian 1:16:20
7 Shakhnovsky, Oleg 1:20:54
8 Lewis, Robert 1:21:05
9 Widerstrom, Bjorn 1:21:56
10 Kirschenbaum, Leif 1:24:45
11 Ernst, Tim 1:29:20
12 Kopeikina, Svetlana 1:29:46
13 Stevenson, Frazier 1:30:34
14 Jacobs, Marsha 1:37:52
15 Gerstner, Meg 1:37:53
16 Gillis, Trinka 1:42:43
17 Hann, Jay 1:53:44
18 French, Dean 2:14:20
19 Wemmer & Van Hoff 2:45:15
Lee, Vivian mp
Cobey, Chris dnf
Cobey, Carolyn dnf
Arnocey, Aubrey dnf
GREEN 4.5 km, 270 m, 11 controls - 21 entries
1 Fjellbirkeland, Lars 1:01:54
2 Custer, Evan 1:02:19
3 Wildfogel, Dennis 1:06:04
4 Glendinning, Alan 1:06:28
5 Brunzell, Anna 1:13:35
6 Cooley, Bob 1:15:34
7 Wilson, James 1:19:51
8 Jorgensen, David 1:19:56
9 Scarborough, Joe 1:31:11
10 Fleishman, Mike 1:39:01
11 Wojkowicz, Debbie 1:39:13
12 Porrat, Dana 1:42:54
13 Goss, Stacy 1:47:58
14 Conkle, Cecil 2:07:41
15 Madrid, Louise 2:30:05
Hintz, Stew dnf
Cardoza, Chris dnf
Moran, Tim dnf
Lanam, Jeff dnf
Johnson, Rosemary dnf
Petersen, Janet dnf
RED 5.9 km, 350 m, 14 controls - 15 entries
1 Karras, Tapio 1:07:34
2 Kohler, Matthias 1:12:58
3 Petersen, Mark 1:17:27
4 Greene, Dan 1:22:53
5 Carpenter, Gary 1:24:23
6 Rosenzweig, Eric 1:28:45
7 Weber, Nik 1:28:50
8 Schoenfeld, Kevin 1:44:44
9 Pinkham, Tony 1:44:49
10 Jaehn, Rod 1:45:36
11 Thomas, G. & Price, S. 2:14:08
12 Masalkovas, Andrejas 2:27:35
Blair, Mark dnf (skipped a control)
Maclean, Derek dnf
Rice, Mark mp
BLUE 7.5 km, 450 m, 18 controls - 13 entries
1 Reader, Syd 1:09:52
2 Riley, Wyatt 1:10:44
3 Karlsson, Marcus 1:11:46
4 Stoll-Hadayia, Dan 1:19:48
5 Lewis, Jeff 1:21:29
6 Stein, Doug 1:22:48
7 Valmaki, Mikko 1:25:53
8 Boughner, Van 1:42:43
9 Winterbottom, Rex 1:48:00
10 Britton, John 1:48:26
11 Graube, Peter 1:53:41
12 Masalkovas, Vadimas 2:05:21
13 Vomund, Mark 3:12:59