Briones Regional Park
Date: (Sat.) Mar. 29, 2008
Location: Lafayette, CA
Event Director: 
- 510.658.4327
Course Setter: Penny DeMoss
Type: C; INTERMEDIATE AND ADVANCED COURSES ONLY--there will be no Beginner (White/Yellow) courses available due to park restrictions on parking
Related Information
Event Announcement WinSplits (http://www.obasen.nu/winsplits/online/en/show_event.asp?id=9130) RouteGadget - Introduction RouteGadget - Event (http://baoc.org/gadget/cgi/reitti.cgi?act=map&id=125&kieli=) Control Descriptions
Event Write-Up
By Harold and Penny DeMoss
Thanks to all who came to Briones last Sat. It was a perfect day for running hard, cool with only a brief shower early on. Competitors couldn't help but notice the abundant wildflowers on the courses ... stopping to gaze at them in some instances (or so I heard).
Some of you might be wondering what I meant by my description of the courses as "fast". I've got to admit that I'm not sure what I was thinking!! When I vetted the control locations, I did them by area, not by course, and I was thinking they'd be more runnable than they proved to be. I actually found that out myself the day before when I put out the controls. "Yikes", I thought, "these are bloody hard courses". Well, everyone seemed to enjoy the challenge anyway. With the exception of Green, the winning times on all the courses were acceptable.
Penny
The following is written by Harold (since Penny has a lot of work to catch up on).
A lot of new faces—a few Adventure Racers—entered. Some did Orange, and some went up to Brown and Green. So I guess they got an "Adventure" on the Briones map. The winners: Orange—Steve Stanley at 1:01:57; Brown—Hannu Haarma at 53:52; Green—Kent Ohlund at 1:29:32; Red—Christian Degan at 1:04:36; Blue—Jonas Kjall at 1:16:23.
A few items of note:
- Kurt Schar (6th place on Blue, 1:46:33) emailed me a few weeks ago from his home in Zurich, and said he would be visiting in San Francisco, and would like to attend our event. He ran a good time, considering he had never been on the Briones map before.
- Another visitor, Jonas Kjall (1st place on Blue, 1:16:23) is from Sweden and is attending UC Berkeley. He had never been on the map before, either.
- However, I think the highlight of the day was that two of our juniors (and I mean "very junior"), moved up from having done White and Yellow courses in the past, skipped intermediate Orange, and went to the advanced courses. And at Briones, these were very hard courses, both technically, and physically. Julia Doubson, who is 7 years old, did Brown in 1:24:48—15th place out of 26 competitors—shadowed by her father, Fyodor Konkov (after running Blue earlier, I'm surprised he could keep up with Julia!). Another junior, Daniel Kopisch is 13, skipped Brown and went right to Green—a very hard Green! He finished in 1:56:26—6th place out of 19 competitors—shadowed by his father, Manfred Kopisch. Manfred informed me that Daniel had leg cramps between controls 11 and 12, and laid on the ground for several minutes!
- Both Julia and Daniel ran in the BAOC COOL series (which was designed and promoted by Jay Hann, as a way to get more Juniors into Orienteering). I think this shows that Jay's concept of the COOL series was and is well planned. Both Julia and Daniel put their courses on RouteGadget—Daniel did his route from memory and his GPS readout.
- Another Junior who ran an advanced course was Masha Velichko—Brown course, 1:20:36, 13th place out of 26 runners. She is 12 or 13, and this might have been her first advanced course.
We had a lot of helpers on Saturday: Jim Fish arrived early and helped set up the remote start. He then helped set up the epunch tent, and all the associated equipment. Jim, Peter Graube, and Evan Custer both ran courses and did the epunch duties. Martin Kunz, and James Wilson did registration. As things wound down, Tony Pinkam, Matthias Kohler, Steve Haas, and Jim Fish broke down the tents, and Evan put everything in his car for transport! Thanks also to Natasha for helping break down the Start after Julia headed out on her course.
The pickup crew consisted of: Steve Gregg, Steve Harrison, Mark Blair, Jim Fish, Theo Verhoven, Greg Ehrensing, Kelly Wells, and last but not least, "Marley". We also wish to thank Denise DeFreese, Briones Head Ranger, and "Dave", who took Penny and me out to several locations with the water. The unintended consequence of our water drop was that Dave and I found a mountain bike by the side of the trail. Dave said that the previous weekend a mountain biker had gotten lost in Briones, left his bike and tried to walk out, got more lost and called 911 right before dark and was rescued—but couldn't remember where he left his bike! The man needs a compass, and some instruction!
Many thanks to Bob Cooley for printing the maps.
A good time was had by all. Thanks to everybody for coming!
Harold and Penny DeMoss
Note from Harold:
- I apologize to the runners who did Blue. The control number 15 (code 45) was misplaced in the wrong re-entrant. It was on the green × at the bottom of the circle, not the re-entrant up higher at the center of the circle. Hopefully most runners, in contouring around from the previous control 14 (ditch end), saw it as they were heading towards the center of the circle, and might or might not have noticed the misplacement. The 3 runners who were originally DQ'ed were reinstated with a time from 14 to 15, relative to what other runners did—most runners did the leg in 2 to 4 minutes.
- Again, my apologies. No excuses.
Note from Steve Gregg:
- Interested Red runners,
- Vlad and I went out to pick up controls after the event, and to check out the allegedly misplaced Blue 15. We also took the opportunity to check out the route to Red control 10 from the little hilltop to the east, since many Red runners overran the control attacking from that direction.
- As Harold posted, we did confirm that Blue 15 was incorrectly placed. But we also confirmed that Red 10 was fine. Vlad's GPS showed the relative heights of the hilltop and the boulder at the control to be completely correct.
- We followed a large elephant track west from the hilltop, and observed that after about 25 meters, we were noticeably higher than the hilltop itself. I suspect what happened to the runners who went that way during the race is that the "path of least resistance" going west from the hilltop (easier vegetation, more runnable slope) goes up about half a contour from the hilltop, but not steeply enough that you would really notice in a race situation. But as Vlad and I were walking and paying careful attention, it was clear that a lot of people had mistakenly gone about a contour line too high.
Note from Vladimir Gusiatnikov:
- I used a Polar S625x with a pressure-based altimeter for the altitude measurements, not a GPS. Red Control 10 was 4 meters below the hilltop Steve mentions. Blue Control 15 was 14 meters below and to the SW of where I would put it.
Results
Briones Regional Park
Martinez, CA
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Pl Name Time
Orange Course (4.2 km, 205 m climb, 10 controls)
1 Steve Stanley 1:01:57
2 Matej Sebo (SDO) 1:05:51
3 John McCann 1:28:22
4 Joe Saba 1:37:01
5 Poletaev Team 1:45:21
6 Alan Houser 1:50:26
7 Pohl, Woo 1:56:48
8 Jan Vanhoutte 2:30:31
9 Tom Welte 2:40:39
Flagg, Bunch DNF
Tracy Sanders DNF
Sundance Spivey, Duraid Zayouna DNF
Brown Course (4.4 km, 225 m climb, 11 controls)
1 Hannu Haarma 53:52
2 Tony Pinkham 59:31
3 Greg Ehrensing 1:02:09
4 Stefan Stefanov 1:03:12
5 Dennis Wildfogel 1:03:49
6 Joe Scarborough 1:05:59
7 Evan Custer 1:06:20
8 Wayne Caplinger 1:09:47
9 Scott Williams 1:10:39
10 Kelly Wells 1:15:15
11 Russell Green 1:16:27
12 Shura Krechetov 1:19:10
13 Masha Velichdo 1:20:36
14 Brian Kirshner 1:23:33
15 Julia Doubson 1:24:48
16 Laszlo Varga 1:27:50
17 Terri Hunt 1:35:10
18 Irena Stefanova 1:37:21
19 Jim Fish 1:41:03
20 Elizabeth Wilson 1:44:11
21 Jennifer Kerr (GCO) 1:46:57
22 David Meredith 1:58:47
23 Rosemary Johnson 1:59:58
24 Ed Wirth, Jen Grafe 2:16:25
25 Barbara Straka 2:41:28
Vic Revenko DNF
Green Course (5.7 km, 375 m climb, 13 controls)
1 Kent Ohlund 1:29:32
2 Dan Greene 1:38:01
3 James Wilson 1:41:38
4 Greg Lennon 1:47:43
5 Adrian Martin 1:47:56
6 Daniel Kopisch 1:56:26
7 Bob Cooley 1:57:03
8 Bud Laird 2:06:14
9 Leon Berzins 2:11:34
10 Debbie Wojtowicz 2:36:45
11 Wes Erck 2:45:00
12 Alan Kren 3:16:02
13 Johanna Merriss 3:17:47
14 William Straka 3:28:33
Terry Farrah DNF
Marina Keating DNF
Stephanie Maclean DNF
Young Wailes DNF
Old Wailes DNF
Red Course (6.8 km, 450 m climb, 15 controls)
1 Christian Degen 1:04:36
2 Sergey Velichdo 1:12:39
3 Steve Gregg 1:18:06
4 Mikkel Conradi 1:26:50
5 Tapio Karras 1:27:21
6 Matthias Kohler 1:30:56
7 Derek Maclean 1:37:07
8 Jan Urban (SDO) 1:43:13
9 Alex Finch 1:48:34
10 Lubomir Sebo (SDO) 1:55:16
11 Steve Harrison 1:55:21
12 Michael Behrens 1:55:43
13 John Turner 2:02:32
14 Gavin Wyatt-Mair 2:07:20
15 Deron van Hoff 2:11:02
16 Mark Blair 2:15:19
17 Bob Strauss 2:33:05
18 Joe Inkenbrandt 2:34:10
19 Theo Verhoeven 2:37:33
20 Colin Speer 2:56:31
Jerry Young DNF
Steve Haas DNF
Blue Course (7.9 km, 540 m climb, 19 controls)
1 Jonas Kjall 1:16:23
2 Ben Legg 1:32:48
3 Scott Porter 1:36:00
4 Vladimir Gusiatnikov 1:39:01
5 Dag Ainsoo 1:45:03
6 Kurt Schar 1:46:33
7 Andrejus Masalkovas 1:46:42
8 Pierre Delforge 1:48:04
9 Greg Khanlarov 1:49:26
10 Tim Kuenster 2:00:00
11 Syd Reader 2:01:25
12 Greg Favor 2:02:33
13 Mark Manning 2:05:34
14 Fyodor Konkov 2:06:44
15 Russell Neilson 2:15:24
16 Andrew Peterson 2:21:38
17 Peter Graube 2:26:49
18 Margaret Longstreth 2:47:05
19 Joe Maffei 2:48:17
20 Lovalenti group 3:15:14
21 Curtis Caddell, Anne Deucher 3:36:35
Julien Lallemand DNF
_______________
DNF = Did not finish (missed one or more controls)