Roberts Regional Recreation Area & Joaquin Miller Park
Date: (Sun.) Jul. 10, 2011
Location: Oakland, CA
Event Director: - 510.681.6181
Course Setter: Jonas Kjall
Type: B; Beginner (White and Yellow), intermediate (Orange), and two advanced (Brown/Green and Red/Blue) courses; followed by a social potluck and navigational training activities for everyone
Related Event Information
Event Announcement WinSplits Results (http://www.obasen.nu/winsplits/online/en/show_event.asp?id=17859) RouteGadget – Introduction RouteGadget – This Event (http://baoc.org/gadget/cgi/reitti.cgi?act=map&id=262&kieli=) Control Descriptions
Great Idea, Jonas; and Thanks, Ben and Steve!
By
The combination of Roberts and Joaquin Miller is a perfect summer venue — there are so many parks where it would be absurd to plan a course in the hot heat and overgrown vegetation. But it is rare in Joaquin Miller that it would be hot, and it's likely to be mild or even cool. Not to mention, probably the best slice of technical terrain we have in the bay area. Thanks to Jonas Kjäll who took on quite a monumental course-setting task with a short lead time; while the map is decent, it is far from perfect. And Jonas squeezed about the most demanding courses he could for the experienced navigators. While "pushing the boundaries" with the map, by all means the courses provided what constitutes a real orienteering experience on the international level — if WOC was held in the Bay Area, these would have been the types of middle courses you would get. Having run it myself, I appreciated the constant intense challenge and the sequencing of a mix of terrains.
But that's not all. We had a nice potluck and some fun training exercises by Ben Legg. And visitors from France and Norway. Good times in the redwood forest. To help Jonas get the event going, I agreed to be the nominal event director, and I thank everyone he thanked who helped coordinate this. In addition to Jonas' thank-you's below, I will also thank Jonas and Ben for helping to steer the event — it was Ben who was in charge for most of the time, since I had to leave to teach a scheduled class for my SAT prep job. Mark Blair made a heroic run to Ben's place after he realized the epunch units were not with the stuff he left for me (discovering them at the storage facility...). Steve Gregg finalized the permits that I initiated with East Bay Parks. Tiffany Margulici and Jeff Crowle, the Roberts rangers, were kind to accept our late request for an event, as this was scheduled in the summer. (In a funny twist of fate, I ran into Tiffany while I was putting out the White and Yellow controls early that morning!) Jonas picked up the controls while the training was occurring, and Ben helped with that, too. I think Ben also gave beginner's clinics.
Thanks to Volunteers!
By Jonas Kjäll
The planning for this race started really late, but with many people pitching in with a great team effort it turned into a great success. First let's thank Alex Finch, without whom this race never would have taken place. Alex, who does a great job as the BAOC Events Coordinator, had been searching for sometime for someone to put on a race in the summer, but none had the time to take on the main meet responsibilities. He finally managed to convince us of doing a scaled down middle-distance B-meet and recruited some additional people to help with various things, like Dennis Woldfogel who did all of the volunteer recruitment for this event. Dennis, together with George Minarik and Steve Gregg, also did some very helpful course/map consulting and vetting on this old map. Bob Cooley as always did a terrific job in printing high-quality maps, Rosemary Johnson and Mark Blair set up the e-punch and processed the results, and James Wilson handled the registration all by himself and kept it open way past closing time for people who hadn't read the event schedule, comfortable that he could finish his own course before course closing. Jim Fish also manned the start for the whole event and Angela Hunter did the same for the E-punch station. Thank you to Werner Haag, Greg Ehrensing, Nancy Lindeman, and Judy Koehler for helping take down the event.
Tales from the Courses!
By Jonas Kjäll
For the advanced courses the start field was largest on Red/Blue, contrary to most BAOC events. Many of the "regular long-time BAOC members" were away on other adventures and some "Green runners" took the opportunity to step up to the Red/Blue, which physically was like an easy Green. Looking at the splits, there were more "red" than usual — whether this depended on the unusual terrain and courses for the Bay Area, or the old map, is hard to say, probably a combination of the two. However, there were not more DNFs than usual, so it looks like the runners enjoyed the technical course setting. No control stood out in the number of runners who lost time to it — about half of the controls had a couple of runners losing time. However the runners who missed Red/Blue #4 lost a lot of time. The dense forest on the steep slope made it hard to move fast there.
Three runners stood out on the Brown/Green course: Misha Kreslavsky won at 36:13 minutes, about a minute ahead of Greg Khanlarov, who was another minute ahead of Jonathan Owens, all with about 5 minutes of mistakes. These three obviously enjoyed the technical course setting, since they all headed out on the Red/Blue course directly afterwards.
The race on the Red/Blue course was very competitive and open, with 8 different runners winning splits. With several lead changes during the race, Mikkel Conradi ended up victorious, passing Francois Leonard in the last flat Redwood forest in Roberts. Rex Winterbottom took second place, also squeezing by Francois there. Other contenders with multiple split wins included some visiting Norwegians, but a couple of costly mistakes made them finish further down (and also a "scandi" last control mispunch(?)). Mikkel's winning time was 48 minutes, at least 5 minutes longer than I would have expected from this start field. The combined fastest split times were 39:37, maybe 2–3 minutes longer than I had expected. However, Mikkel was running for the first time after being sick for a couple of weeks, and the other top contenders missed a bit more than one can do to win a race like this. Unfortunately I never had time to test run the course myself. A 100-pt. runner is supposed to have a 30–40 min with a clean race. I guess I will have to put that to a test a some point, but it looks like the course might have been a few hundred meters too long.
The advanced courses were set as a middle distance (I think the description in the IOF Competition Rules for Foot Orienteering [PDF/327KB] (http://orienteering.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/IOF-Foot-Orienteering-Rules-2011.pdf) is very good, short, and to the point):
- "The Middle distance profile is technical. It takes place in a non-urban (mostly forested) environment with an emphasis on detailed navigation and where finding the controls constitute a challenge. It requires constant concentration on map reading with occasional shifts in running direction out from controls. The element of route choice is essential but should not be at the expense of technically demanding orienteering. The route in itself shall involve demanding navigation. The course shall require speed-shifts e.g. with legs through different types of vegetation."
As opposed to a long distance (or "regular BAOC classic") that tests physical endurance, planning and route choice — the long distance controls in themselves don’t have to be technical — and the sprint course, that should have very fast running speed through the whole course (preferably in urban or park setting) with complex route choice, but their execution and finding the controls should be easy.
Training Fun!
By Ben Legg
We had two training activities for all to enjoy. About 15 people took part, with a good mix of expert, intermediate, and raw beginners trying each activity.
The first activity was a 2-km Line-O course. Instead of giving you a map with checkpoints, we drew a long curving line on the map. If you followed the line perfectly, and kept your eyes open, you would find a dozen checkpoints. But if you cut some corners or lost track of the line, you might miss them all.
The second activity was even trickier. We created a set of 5 super-short courses, less than 400 meters apiece. Each course had 5 or 6 checkpoints to find. So far so good, but the twist was that the map was entirely blank. Not a single feature on the map, except for the north lines, the scale bar, and the checkpoints. The only way to find them was to carefully orient yourself, and track your distance. Amazingly enough, almost everyone was able to make this work!
Results
Roberts Regional Recreation Area & Joaquin Miller Park
Oakland, CA
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Here are the results from the event at Robert Regional Recreational Area and Joaquin Miller Park. Please let know if there are any errors.
Also see control-by-control timing in the WinSplits results (http://www.obasen.nu/winsplits/online/en/show_event.asp?id=17859).
You can see the event map with the actual routes traveled by participants, and draw your own route for comparison, in RouteGadget (introduction; this event (http://baoc.org/gadget/cgi/reitti.cgi?act=map&id=262)).
Pl Name(s) Time
White Course (1.4 km, 35 m climb, 9 controls) 1 Barry Smith 13:32 2 Harry & Scott May 22:02 3 Kenzie Medearis 23:52 4 Christina & Joshua Roberts 30:48 5 Safiya Karmy-Jones 34:57 Yellow Course (2.0 km, 75 m climb, 10 controls) 1 Ingrid & Anna Madslien 18:40 2 Olga Kolomensky 20:52 3 Dylan Everingham 23:19 4 Anthea Carmichael, Carol Bruton 28:47 5 Daniel Sebo 32:37 6 Rishi Gupta 35:22 7 Hippies at War 35:39 8 Marvin Herrera 37:04 9 Patrick McGlynn 40:27 10 Jennifer & Janet Sheehy 41:08 11 Neda & Lasta Tomasevich 47:33 12 MapBusters: Rivka Gordon, Bill Finzer, Brigid McCaw, Trip Van Noppen 49:38 13 Celeste Burrows 51:02 Bryan Kwee DNF Margaret Mooney, Roni Dodson DNF Second Course 1 Kenzie Medearis 52:22 Orange Course (3.0 km, 160 m climb, 10 controls) 1 Ralf Burgert 37:10 2 Matt Adams 37:45 3 Rachel Jensen 53:56 4 David Strong & R2D2 58:18 5 Erin Magers 1:04:23 7 Charles Brenner 1:08:20 8 Richard & Ty Gampell, Irene Kim 1:08:35 9 John Marold 1:13:28 10 Brent Adams 1:15:41 11 Paul & Kathy Li 1:19:59 12 Judy Koehler 1:20:29 13 Kwan Leung, Brian Li 1:22:53 14 Dick, Chris, & James Sheehy 1:39:18 15 Mike Meagher, Paula Zurowski 1:44:00 16 Kevin Walker 1:59:03 17 Dan Roberts 2:06:32 Emily & Rob Peters DNF Ellen & Nolan Scheetz DNF Darren Don DNF Beth Dixon, Leila Mammeri DNF Second Course Olga Kolomensky 40:38 (estimated Start) Anthea Carmichael, Carol Bruton 1:01:29 Barry Smith 1:09:06 Brown/Green Course (3.1 km, 180 m climb, 13 controls) 1 Misha Kreslavsky 36:13 2 Greg Khanlarov 37:32 3 Jonathan Owens 38:43 4 James Wilson 52:07 5 Bob Cooley 52:54 6 Wayne Caplinger 1:02:55 7 Lauren Knight 1:03:06 8 Vicki Woolworth 1:06:07 9 Evan Custer 1:06:19 10 Svetlana Sokolova 1:10:06 11 Marie-Jose Parayre 1:21:58 12 Nick Corsano 1:27:09 13 Jennifer Kerr (GCO) 1:50:54 14 Bud Laird 1:56:33 15 Terry Gleason 2:00:48 16 Jim Fish 2:14:23 17 Judy & Tom Cronin 3:18:20 18 Nancy Lindeman 3:19:05 Judy Opsahl DNF Dick Opsahl DNF Jeff Lanam DNF Meg Holmberg, Tim Erickson DNF Rosemary Johnson DNF Second Course Joe Maffei 1:11:00 Red/Blue Course (4.4 km, 270 m climb, 18 controls) 1 Mikkel Conradi 48:39 2 Rex Winterbottom 50:52 3 Francois Leonard 51:50 4 Bruce Wolfe 1:00:22 5 Misha Kreslavasky 1:03:23 6 Andrejus Masalkovas 1:05:01 7 Aksel Madslien 1:05:45 8 Matej Sebo 1:05:50 9 Matthias Vangbo 1:08:00 10 Lubomir Sebo 1:08:32 11 Penny DeMoss 1:12:45 12 Mark Blair 1:17:25 13 Nikoly Chukanov 1:25:12 14 Werner Haag 1:28:31 15 Ole Haugen 1:28:36 16 Peter Graube 1:28:52 17 Gavin Wyatt-Mair 1:29:30 18 Joe Maffei 1:31:22 19 Cedric LaFargues, David Demau 1:32:06 20 Luc Poppe 1:32:21 21 Johanna Merriss 1:36:30 22 Theo Verhoeven 1:49:41 23 Phillip Hoare 2:10:17 24 Frederick Lee 2:19:04 25 Damon Ward 2:25:57 26 Joe Inkenbrandt 2:39:23 Jorgen Madslien DNF Greg Ehrensing DNF Evan Pyke DNF Jason Reed DNF Second Course Jonathan Owens 54:25 Greg Khanlarov 1:00:07 _______________
DNF = Did not finish (missed one or more controls)