By Luc Poppe
I must admit, the "Weather Gods" had granted us another miracle, rivaling the one of last year's Sunol event. Sandwiched in between some uncharacteristic cold spells, we had a perfect weekend with plenty of sunshine to warm up about 320 very eager participants, who for some reason showed up very early that day to enjoy the magnificent spring colors in all hues of green known to mankind. By 9:15 we had about 100 people asking when they could leave on their chosen challenge of the day.
On the previous day, unbeknown to the control set-up crew, one of the controls was able to hide in one of the remotest crannies of **Mark'**s car trunk and was "temporarily" forgotten. Only after doing the final sanity check at the end of the day (by that time it was already 7:00 PM, and darkness was just around the corner) it was discovered that we successfully placed 65 controls, even though our strategic war plan dictated it to be 66. As a result, we had to assign Theo to go set out the "forgotten" control the morning of the event. Unfortunately, that control required a considerable hike, and we had to wait for **Theo'**s return to give the go-ahead to release the by-then very antsy crowd. Fortunately, Marina did an excellent job in crowd control at the Start area, and no riots were reported.
In the mean time, the advanced course runners had ample time to warm up, thanks to **Mark'**s ingenious remote Start location, requiring a healthy hike up the hill. Even with this pre-race elevation gain, the advanced courses were still quite physically challenging, but this is impossible to avoid, considering topography at Sunol.
We are very happy to report that many old and new faces alike were seen on that day. We had a substantial group, PALS, from a Walnut Creek school, participating with about 35 kids and their families in their first-ever orienteering experience. We also had our Swiss guest orienteer Claudia Schaerer, who came especially to Sunol to get a taste of West Coast Orienteering (never mind that she also had to be in the Bay Area for business...). She was so positively impressed that she was desperately looking for more events during her stay. Trinka did an excellent job in providing some logistic support.
At 12:30, we still had people coming in and trying to register, but we had to be cruel and enforce the rules of the day.
We had great luck with the weather but, unfortunately, not with the electronics. Both SPORTident splits tag printers were producing bad tags for all the older e-sticks. (We now know the cause of this problem.) Some very crucial data was accidentally left off the laptop computer used with our new runner registration software, and this slowed down the registration process considerably. On a day when more than 300 people came to the event, this resulted in a long line of folks waiting to register, while probably also registering some understandable irritation. Oh well. Chalk this up as yet another mistake to avoid in the future.
For the advanced courses this year, the course setter wanted to concentrate on the eastern, more open portion of the map. He also wanted to touch on some of the northern reaches seldom traversed. To accomplish this without forcing runners to cross the giant N-S canyon that bisects the map, advanced runners were directed uphill for quite a distance to a remote Start. This little warm-up hike also served to remove that climb from the courses themselves. Even so, the Brown course still turned out to be a little too physical for a course of that type. The published climb figure on the Blue course was also substantially underestimated.
Fortunately most people were able to enjoy their romp in the park, and some of them deserve special mention, as they excelled in their respective races.
Sisters Katie and Sara Petersen dueled it out on the White and Yellow courses. Katie won the White course in 18:59, just ahead of Daniel Sebo. Sara was faster on the Yellow course, but not as fast as Levi Miller who won the Yellow course in 26:38. The steep Sunol hills made the Orange courses harder than usual. Nancy Lindeman had invited her sister Kathie. While making their way up the hill to the Start, Kathie wondered aloud whether this was now the "joy of orienteering" Nancy so often talks about. They were both all smiles though when they crossed the Finish, and seemed to have had a great time. James Wilson finished the Orange course in 52:46, just ahead of Gary Kraght, while Rex Winterbottom held off all the adventure runners on Long Orange with a very fast 1:00:10, more than 25 minutes ahead of Chris Land.
On the Brown course, Dennis Wildfogel had a comfortable lead of almost 10 minutes over Shura Krechetov who was second. Both of them way ahead of the pack. Brown, being a bit harder than usual, had quite a number of DNFs — for some it was the heat, and for others just a bit too hilly.
The Green course seemed to be a popular choice, as 29 people chose this course. Terje Mathisen made it in a quick 1:02:43. Red on the other hand, had only 14 participants, with Donatas Ereminas (1:16:09) beating Steve Gregg by a good 10 minutes. But we can blame that on the fact that Steve was the first runner of the day, having to wake up all those sleepy controls.
The Blue course was conquered by Jonas Kjall in a very speedy 1:05:56, with Francois Leonard second in 1:13:53, and Dennis Wilkinson third in 1:18:59. The remaining 16 people were nicely spread out with 1- to 2-minute "courtesy" gaps.
For those who participated in the Morgan Territory Rogaine three weeks prior, Rex Winterbottom had organized an award ceremony, making a lot of us the happy recipients of a certificate proving for generations to come that we somehow were able, at least on that day, to outsmart and outrun our closest orienteering rivals.
Nick Corsano presided over the BAOC Annual Meeting, of which you can read the report here.
And of course, none of the happenings on this gorgeous spring day could have materialized without the incredible dedication of my closest associates, Mark Blair and Theo Verhoeven, who dutifully assisted me with my first ED assignment as course setters and general advisors, and the whole crew of volunteers, for which I'm very thankful, and hope to repay them in the future:
Pierre Delforge for vetting
Marina Keating & Benn Legg for starts
Steve Gregg as control waker-upper to mention only one task
Joe Maffei as assistant early starter and also Finish staffer
Werner Haag for Finish staffer
Jim Fish & Peter Graube for too many jobs to describe
Johanna Merriss, Nancy Lindeman, & Rex Winterbottom for their numerous clinics
Gavin Wyatt-Mair and Mark Petersen for their impromptu Scouts Clinic
Rex, again, for providing all the goodies we could munch on
Toby Ferguson for epunch
James Wilson for registration
Esther Heller & Judy Koehler for assisting James and Toby to keep their heads above water
Peter Graube for directing control pick up
Steve Haas, Kelly Wells, Nancy Lindeman and 2 assistants, Jim Fish, Peter Graham, Dennis Wilkinson as control picker-uppers
Gavin Wyatt-Mair for his nonchalant offer to trudge back up to the advanced Start and bring it back down all by himself
I apologize if I have forgotten anyone — it must have been due to all of the excitement, this being my first ED assignment!
I really, really enjoyed working with all of you, and hope we can do this again in the future (I'm keeping this volunteer list :-).
Lost & Found
If anyone has more info on these items, please contact Luc Poppe.
Lost Items
3 e-sticks were lost.
- One was lost in the vicinity of control 111 (Brown #9, Green #11, Blue #14).
- One was found at the Finish and was returned to Registration.
- No details on the other one.
2 compasses were lost at or before the advanced Start area. They belong to Joe Scarborough.
- Suunto thumb with magnifier
- Silva Jet 5 with pace counter
Found Item
- Gray hooded sweater with UCSD printed on the front.
RouteGadget