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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

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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

  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)