By Kelly Wells
One of my favorite things to do when directing or course setting is to see who comes to the event. I was glad to see long-time BAOC members Mark and Janet Petersen and their girls come down from the Sierra Nevada for this year's Sunol experience. First-time orienteer Chip Edin had called from Missouri in February and started making plans to attend. Other visitors included Jurgen Luwald and Elexis Scott from NEOC, Leif Lundquist from Tucson Orienteering Club, and two Blue-course runners from England: Christopher Davidson of JOK and Ian Marsden of HH. It's a good reflection on our club when orienteers from around the U.S. and the world look us up and attend our "B" events.
My next favorite thing to do is look at the routes drawn on RouteGadget and read the comments. Gary Carpenter set good courses and utilized a remapped portion of the park. Many legs had multiple route choices and the advanced courses shared common legs, which then forked to unique controls. I was particularly interested in route choices from Blue 2 to 3 and was pleased to see the variations drawn on RouteGadget. One competitor posted that Green 6 was a bingo control, and no one on Green appeared to take the circuitous ridgeline run from Green 7 to 8. The "Reentrant of Doom" did not seem to be a factor, and everyone wisely skirted it high or low so, unfortunately, there will be no legends for 2007. Our biggest complaint on the advanced courses was that a lot of the light green sections on the map should be changed to dark green to reflect the poison oak. I encourage all competitors to draw their routes on RouteGadget and compare their splits with others. This is a good learning tool to improve your orienteering skills, and actually provide some post-race, armchair orienteering.
Working with Gary on courses is a pleasure. The Orange & advanced courses are usually designed and streamered about a month before the event. After vetting, we hang bags about 2 weeks prior to the event so the pre-runners can actually punch and not just look for streamers. With 4 pre-runners going out the week before the event, we had good feedback on the routes and control locations, and we were extremely confident of the map and courses. This left us with a few buffer days to tweak the courses before we printed the final maps. Some of you Blue runners should thank Mark Prior for saving your life and helping answer the question of whether we should map the worst poison oak section and impassable cliffs and gullies along Welch Creek Road as out of bounds.
This year was one marked by renegade cows. They knocked down over 15 controls and moved some water jugs in the week prior to the event. We re-hung the knocked-down bags while setting the Epunch units out on the day before the event. I hoped nothing would happen to them that night. I enjoy vetting Gary's courses and taking my dog, Marley, out on these hikes, since Sunol is an off-leash park. Marley is about the size of a small coyote and occasionally 3 or 4 mama cows would line up with their calves and march directly at us in an attempt to get this perceived predator out of their territory. I would try to get him to speak and show a little herding authority, but he just put his tail between his legs and took off with a look that said, "Good luck dude, you're on your own, try not to impale yourself on a control stand if you decide to run too!" On Saturday evening, I was out in the rain showers hanging White and Yellow, and there were about 60 renegade cows gathered around the pond at Yellow #6 giving me that look that only a cow can give. I decided to hang Y6 early the next morning. Still relevant after 30 years, I remembered a quote from Steve Martin in The Cruel Shoes, "... and I guess you might say I learned my lesson: Don't fool with renegade cows."
Sunol continues to be one of the most popular and profitable BAOC "B" events. It helps make all the work worthwhile. This year the club netted $1253 after fees and expenses. The turnout was smaller, at 183, than last year's record-breaking 268, but I was pleased with the number of competitors and the results. The rains were intermittent and did not have an adverse affect on the number of participants. Here is a comparison of Sunol statistics over the last several years by course and weather.
Date 4/22/07 3/19/06 3/20/05 3/21/04 4/22/03 6/22/02
Weather Rain Dry Rain Dry Rain Dry
White 13 25 18 4 27
Yellow 18 28 29 9 38
Orange 23 24 13 15 27
Long Orange 7 0 15 0 0
Brown 15 30 25 20 16
Green 23 25 24 15 23
Red 19 18 25 14 16
Blue 18 19 16 12 10
Rogaine, 7 hour 93
Rogaine, 4 hour 79
Total entries 136 169 165 172 89 157
Total participants 183 268 214 172 107 238
It's also fun to check out the results, then Google the competitors on the BAOC Web site to see who has run Sunol in past years and check how they performed this year compared to others.
I want to thank Brian, Isabel, Tom, Barb, Troop 706, Leslie, and the others who came up to me after their runs and shared some comments and opinions about their courses and decisions. Feedback is always rewarding, and I regret that I did not have more time to spend with each of you. I am sure Gary is equally appreciative of the feedback that others shared with him, too.
Thanks to the following volunteers who made this event possible. Many other clubs would be ecstatic if they only had a small portion of our volunteer pool:
Gary Carpenter Course setter, permits, setup, takedown, rover
Bob Cooley Map printing & portable print station
Brad Wetmore Insurance and Pre-runner/course feedback
James & Zion Wilson Registration
Everett & Jean Beuerman Registration
Chuck Spalding WYO Starts
Trinka Gillis, Peter Graube E Punch
Ruth Kadel, Steve Gregg E Punch
Dan Greene, Steve Gregg Beginner Clinics
Evan Custer, Mark Prior Pre-Runner/course feedback
Joshua Wells, Tom Carpenter Pre-runner
Harold & Penny DeMoss Control Pickup
Theo & Luc of the Belgian Beer Brigade Control Pickup
Cedric Lasfargues Control Pickup
Mark Blair Control Pickup
Double Trouble Twins: Denise & Darlene Control Pickup
Jim Fish, Bjorn Widerstrom Take Down and Clean up
Joe Scarborough, Derek Maclean Early runners carrying spare epunch unit
Tapio Karras RouteGadget
I also want to thank Tiffany Margulici (EBRPD) and Kelly Barrington (Chief Ranger, Sunol) for their assistance and support. The Bay Area Orienteering Club values its relationship with the East Bay Regional Parks District.
Kelly Wells
Sunol 2007 Event Director
RouteGadget