You don't really need to read this, except perhaps for the results, credits, or the discussion of controls in urban parks. After all, GG99 was pretty much the same old same old. Same great weather, same great park, a greatly improved map, similar large but not overwhelming turnout, a couple of winning Scarboroughs...and did I mention the great weather and great park? A freelance reporter showed up and ran with a Yellow course group. Upcoming headlines in the Chron? A featured 'runner' on Yellow was Theresa Ruebl, 90-year-old grandmother of Jim Michaels, who is a mainstay of the Gold County Orienteers.
Course summary: Total attendance was about 215 people and 121 starts. White course was won by Julie Speckman in 26:20, six minutes faster than number two finisher Chad Mayer. The vast majority of the 33 first-time groups took about an hour, which seems about right for getting their money's worth. Yellow was a bit long at 5.25 km, and the fastest time was turned in by Greg Morgan, taking just over an hour. Most of the 24 entries took between one-and-a-half to two hours. For a standard meet, this might be considered undesirable, but once again, I think it was a matter of getting one's money's worth, and I didn't hear any complaints about the length. (By the way, the course was originally designed and designated as 'Long Yellow'). Some of the times may have been adversely affected by the presence of a surly park semi-resident (polite term) who was camped on top of the fifth control.
Short Orange attracted the fewest entries, 12, and was won by Joe Papendick in 45:30, followed by Patrick Kelly, Bill Papendick, and Marsha Jacobs. The course was marred somewhat by the disappearance of a large picnic table control during the week intervening the setting of the course and the running of it. Medium Orange saw Joe Scarborough and Fabian Meier finish one-two in the fast time of about 45 minutes for the 6.6 km course. Each had a 5 minute penalty for incorrect 'punch', which had no effect on the rankings. Fabian lives very near the park and has been helping Bob finish the field checking. The premiere Long Orange event drew a full 28 entries. James Scarborough covered the 9.25 km and 17 controls in the blistering time of 52:33. Magnus Wallenborg had the second fastest time of 56:54, but both he and James were penalized forincorrect punches (see discussion in Part II). The penalties were just enoughto allow Wyatt Riley to move into second place in the final rankings by running in 58:47 with no control errors. Fully 22 of the 28 entries ran under 10 min/km.
Credits: My sincere thanks to all the helpers who covered up for my lack of organizational talent. Bob Cooley and Fabian Meier (fix that spelling on the map, Bob!) did a magnificent job to get the whole western half field-checked for the advanced courses. I think the runners discovered that this end of the park can produce some satisfying courses. Gary Kraght ran the clinics and organized the results team of Marsha Jacobs, Pamela Tweedy, and Ian Ramsey. EvnJean did their usual cheerful registration work, assisted by Kelly and Julie Wells. The start/finish crew consisted of Neal Barlow, Rosemary Johnson, Sam & Rachel Freund, Megan Fowler and Fabian Meier. Special thanks to Rachel, who filled in everywhere: starts, finishes, setting controls, and in between found time to guide the Spice Boys to a 6th place finish on Short Orange.
Setting controls in urban parks: How do you set controls in public places? Golden Gate Park is a heavily used urban area, and on nice Sundays is crowded with visitors as well as semi-residents. In previous years we have had (pie-plate) controls stolen and moved, both from highly visible areas on beginner courses and from secluded areas on advanced courses. Last year I experimented with using fixed park features such as plaques (and sprinklers ;-)) almost exclusively, which reduced the problem. This worked well once again for the beginner courses. However, restricting controls to clearly identifiable and verifiable permanent features significantly interferes with the setting of challenging courses. There aren't enough of them, and they are generally not at convenient locations.
In Golden Gate Park, a difference of 20-30 yards in the placement of a control can turn a boring trail leg into an interesting route choice, and vice-versa. Each control serves two important purposes: to confirm to the runner that the correct point has been found, and to confirm to the setter that the runner has indeed found it. I found it exceedingly difficult to pick a desirable control point, and then to manufacture an appropriate confirmation. I spent sometimes 10 minutes or more trying, and in the end settled for a number of plates anyway rather than spoil the course by moving a control to a nearby unambiguous feature.
I discovered to my chagrin that although it may have been clear to me that there was unambiguously a tree to the SE of the small depression, and that it clearly leaned to the NE, this was not so clear to every runner. To be sure, many runners obtained the expected answers; I suspect that others were too attuned to minimizing their time spent on punching, and were unable or unwilling to modify their styles to accommodate the careful study of the control area to answer the question accurately. It was certainly the case that I could not be confident that a wrong answer necessarily meant an incorrect navigation. Because of this, I ended up accepting almost any answer for some of the most ambiguous directional controls, and only assessed a penalty - and a reduced one at that - for answers which seemed to be rather unequivocal indications that the runner had identified the wrong feature.
A typical example was the 'GO control' bench on the Orange courses. It had a unique 7 slats (I accepted an answer of 4 seat slats, too) rather than the park standard 5-slat bench. If you answered 5, you weren't there. This approach is clearly not entirely satisfactory. It is hard to penalize a runner for failing to find a control which has no confirming number. But overlooking the error is also not fair to the competitor who takes the time to get it right - and the map is plenty adequate to do just that. An undesirable situation in any case.
What to do next time? Well, this year, no plate controls were moved or removed, whereas two fixed features were adversely affected by non-competitors! My impression is that the Mayor's Office is once again in a 'clean-the-bums-out' phase, and if this continues into next year, the use of far more plate controls is perhaps in order. Or is the effect a plate removed during the competition a consequence worse than what happened this year? What do you say, BAOCers? Was the competition adversely affected by this year's problems?
WHITE COURSE 9 controls 3 km
Name Time Penalty Adj. MSP
1. Julie Speckman 26:20 0 26.20
2. Chad Mayer 32:44 0 32:44
3. Wells & Choy 39:45 0 39:45
4. Barbara Robben 40:51 0 40:51
5. Bob & Jim Molke 41:33 0 41:33
6. Rob Klapper 42:57 0 42:57
7. Van Cleef & Dunning 43:44 0 43:44
8. Rebecca Goodwin 43:49 0 43:49
9. S. Kent 44:32 0 44:32
10. Zupan gp. 46:20 0 46:20
11. Natell, Dawson, Meharg 46:34 0 46:34
12. Bailey, Meharg, Taymor 48:11 0 48:11
13. Wyatt-Mair gp. 49:47 0 49:47
14. Jeff & Jennifer Nunes 49:54 0 49:54
15. Jnakowski & Criqui 53:24 0 53:24
16. Kathy & Robert Rus 54:11 0 54:11
17. Case, Garcia, Garbarino 55:00 0 55:00
18. Goodwin & White 58:02 0 58:02
19. Pamela Tweedy 53:18 5 58:18 #7
20. Raymond & Iris Wong 59:56 0 59:56
21. Bram & Gross 60:50 0 60:50
22. Kap & Gap 62:12 0 62:12
23. Bob & Sheila Weisblat 64:09 0 64:09
24. Cheng & Graube 68:08 0 78:08
25. Ala'ilima 75:00 0 75:00
26. Sally, Shaun, Linda 76:00 0 76:00
27. Brown, Pollock, Small gp. 78:30 0 78:30
28. Heather Bloch 83:53 0 83:53
29. Kenandra & Kenith Wood 79:29 5 84:29 #7
30. Debby Harris 120:55 0 120:55
31. Caroline & Susan Getz 120:55 0 120:55
Gorman & Lo DNF
Villareal Fam. DNF
YELLOW COURSE 13 Controls 5.25 km.
1. Greg Morgan 62:27 0 62:27
2. Leif Kirschenbaum 73:00 0 73:00
3. Marg Pedon 80:04 0 80:04
4. Barbara Robben 86:13 0 86:13
5. Goodwin gp. 88:24 0 88:24
6. J.J. Moody 88:42 0 88:42
7. Chad Meyer 91:54 0 91:54
8. Susan Chang 92:09 0 92:09
9. Szuecs, Orkin, Joseph 98:56 0 98:56
10. George & Pat Aster 99:00 0 99:00
11. Troop 39 99:44 5 104:44 #10
12. Gibbs & Deus 108:57 0 108:57
13. Anu Perasalo 82:06 35 117:06 #2,4,6,12
14. Pitsenbarger & Hall 122:03 0 122:03
15. Vin, JoAnne et. al. 123:46 0 123:46
16. Tom & Leslie Rogers 127:21 0 127:21
17. Aubreys 129:18 0 129:18
18. Mark O'Nieal 141:43 0 141:43
19. Michaels, Suhosky, Ruebl 147:50 0 147:50
20. Maggie & Rachel White 147:35 5 152:35 #4
Cleve & Dunning DNF
Madsen DNF
Bruce & Emily Bassett DNF
Nakell & Dawson DNF
SHORT ORANGE 10 Controls 4.75 km
1. Joe Papendick 45:30 0 45:30
2. Patrick Kelly 52:30 5 57:30 #10
3. Bill Papendick 58:01 0 58:01
4. Marsha Jacobs 59:47 5 64:47 #1
5. Dmitry Schmidt 77:49 0 77:49
6. Baby, Posh, Sporty & Scary 100:15 0 100:15
7. Jennifer Kerr 104:57 0 104:57
8. Bill Ackerman 137:45 5 142:45 #5
9. Coulson & Stanfield 148:33 0 148:33
10. Conrad & Crawford 147:55 5 152:55 #2
11. Linda Bagnall 146:00 35 181:00 #5,6,8,9
Winter DNF
MEDIUM ORANGE 11 Controls 6.6 km.
1. Joe Scarborough 44:41 5 49:41 #1
2. Fabian Meier 46:23 5 51:23 #2
3. Chuck Spalding 59:50 0 59:50
4. Derek MacLean 60:30 0 60:30
5. Scott Aster 57:31 5 62:31 #2
6. Sanna Wallenborg 63:12 0 63:12
7. Jeff Lanam 69:23 0 69:23
8. Mark Goodwin 65:47 5 70:47 #1
9. Patty White 73:11 0 73:11
10. Aileen Abernathy 81:42 0 81:42
11. Terry Gleason 83:37 0 83:37
12. Robert Lewis 79:58 5 84:58 11
13. Phillip Hoare 91:15 5 96:15 #1
14. Orlando San Martin 82:25 15 97:25 #6,11
15. Leslie Minarik 92:43 5 97:43 #8
16. Rosemary Johnson 95:19 5 100:19 #11
17. Nancy Lindeman 111:38 0 111:38
18. Don Gee 118:27 5 123:27 #1
19. Graeve Family 124:33 0 124:33
20. Goss Robinson Stewart gp. 149:27 0 149:27
21. Barbara & Lourdes Barboza 152:11 0 152:11
22. Marcos Georgiadis 174:00 15 189:00 #2,11
Seder DNF
Fant DNF
LONG ORANGE 17 Controls 9.25 km.
1. James Scarborough 52:33 5 57:33 #13
2. Wyatt Riley 58:47 0 58:47
3. Magnus Wallenborg 56:54 5 61:54 #2
4. Mark Prior 64:46 0 64:46
5. Steve Gregg 64:57 0 64:57
6. Dennis Wildfogel 68:31 0 68:31
7. Dan Stoll-Hedaya 70:18 0 70:18
8. Panu Haaramo 70:34 0 70:34
9. Dan Greene 71:05 0 71:05
10. Tom Hancock 66:29 5 71:29 #10
11. Angelica Riley 73:08 0 73:08
12. Chris Taylor 73:57 0 73:57
13. Gavin Wyatt-Mair 79:12 0 79:12
14. Bob Cooley 80:58 0 80:58
15. Chris Sherwood 81:26 0 81:26
16. Tony Pinkham 82:12 0 82:12
17. George Minarik 78:25 5 83:25 #13
18. Steve Lang 79:04 5 84:04 #14
19. Ian Ramsey 85:01 0 85:01
20. Rolf Willecke 81:43 5 86:43 #13
21. Matthias Kohler 88:21 0 88:21
22. Michael Edelstein 84:16 5 89:16 #17
23. Mark Blair 91:36 5 96:36 #17
24. Kelly Wells 105:40 0 105:40
25. Jim & Brian Michaels 115:00 0 115:00
26. Bjorn Widerstrom 117:40 5 122:40 #13
27. Steve & Sheila Smith 132:44 0 132:44
28. Shawn Larsen 134:12 0 134:12