By Deron van Hoff, Event Director and Course Setter
Thanks to everyone who came out and enjoying the Presidio on this first official event of 2021! Here is hoping to many more opportunities as venues start allowing permitted events.
Thank you to our group of volunteers who made the event possible:
- Starts: Steve Gregg, Chuck Spalding, James Roney, Clara Staats
- Assembly Area Setup: Graham Brew
- E-punch: Jeff Lanam, Scott Aster
- Registration: Steve Haas
- Beginner's Clinics: Graham Brew
- Control Pickup: Steve Gregg, James Roney, Chuck Spalding, Tapio Karras
- Maps: Bob Cooley
- Equipment: Jay Hann, Gary Carpenter
- Website: Chuck Spalding
- Insurance Coordination: Marina Keating
- Presidio Trust: Christie Schantz, Will Rocha, Jake
A special shout out to James Roney, a new member of our club who reached out early to volunteer, and to young and up-and-coming star Clara Staats, who worked Starts very proficiently. Thanks for your awesome help during the event.
We had 11 starts on Yellow, 24 starts on Green, and 22 starts on Blue, so a nice distribution across the three courses offered.
Chuck Spalding finished first on Yellow (as a second course), with John and Harry Richardson a close second. Joe and Julien and the Lebreton family finished in nearly a dead heat for third. (The Yellow course shared controls with the Green and Blue courses, so running Yellow second had an advantage—offset by the physical disadvantage of having run a previous course.)
On the Green course, Wayne Staats bested the rest in a good time of 13:24. From the time splits and RouteGadget, it appears Wayne took the correct route from Green 1 to Green 2, avoiding a route through a Forbidden Hedge that many mistakenly took in their haste. (It looks like the route through the Forbidden Hedge saved about 20 to 30 seconds, but would have resulted in disqualification in a competitive event.) Andrew Petersen and Graham Brew finished in second and third. (All three of those guys ran Green after running the Blue course. There were no shared controls, so no benefit was obtained, and they had the physical disadvantage of having already run a longer course.)
The long course of the day, Blue, was won by François Léonard in 22:09. Wayne Staats finished in second despite some less than ideal routes, including running off the map from Blue 3 to Blue 4. 😊 It's nice to be fast! And Ann Marie Cody finished in third with a very good time of 28:03.
Thanks again all for a very successful and low stress event. I look forward to seeing you at one of the upcoming venues!
RouteGadget