August 19, 2008

Meet Results: Bear Basin - 08/17/08

Hi folks- here is the exciting wrap up to our version of Olympic competition up here in beautiful McCall Idaho- Bird's Nest Stadium (we mean a real bird's nest here!).

We had unusually hot weather but I imagine it was much nicer than down in the valley, especially with a nice dip in the lake afterward. The meet was a score-O course with 17 total controls available and a 1.5 hour time limit. The controls were worth 1 point each and the overtime penalty was 1 point per 5 minutes over, which apparently the competitors realized made the time limit effectively 95 minutes and they made use of every minute. The best time management award goes to McCall local Doug Mastaler who competed without a watch and came in with 25 seconds to spare. A couple of controls gave some trouble; MM gave Doug L. so much trouble he gave up on it after a long search and LL gave a few trouble also. I will post a scan of the map on the Yahoo website soon, so the home audience can relive the excitement. Dondi and Sheri took time out from the fabulous huckleberry picking to teach orienteering and find a few controls.

Thanks to Ole, Erik, Luke, Dave, and Bill P. for helping with control pickup! Hope to see you all at the next meet Sept. 13.

Karin

NameTimePointsPenaltyScore
Lee Scott61:3817017
Jeff Black75:1017017
Bill Leahy93:1117017
Ole Bergset94:4316016
David Bergset81:1814014
Brad Acker, Beth Schadd (int)82:2714014
Doug Mastaler94:3514014
Bob Didisse (int)88:5912012
Doug LaMott99:2312-111
Luke Grange, Erik Bergset (int) 104:0814-311
Bill Pilcher116:0717-611
Dondi Black, Sheri LaMott (int)88:25404

Meet Results: Julia Davis/Ann Morrison - 07/27/08

Racers were greeted with course designs from two different meet directors. This was the first course design for both Jeff Decker and Lee Scott with Jeff taking on the Beginner and Intermediate, and Lee taking on the Advanced course. Both directors were excited and nervous to find out how racers would handle each map. And as our sacrificial racers navigated the "novice" maps they also had to navigate their way through clouds of patchouli and incense, drum circles, and mass baptisms which were part of the Goddess Fest taking place in Julia Davis.

The Beginner map saw first time racers Maggie Kidd (11) and Carly Turpen (4). Both navigating their way around the park in respectable times. But Donna Goodwin and Maggie Gregory edged out the Maggie and Carly in the end.

The Intermediate map only had two takers and only one finisher. Dondi Black and Karin Didisse headed out on the Intermediate map and were both greeted with a missing control flag and "squatters" around another. About halfway through Karin decided to save her energy in preparation for next months meet at Bear Basin.

The Advanced map had five racers heading out on a "pilgrimage" on Lee's first attempt at a park meet. Each racer came back from their journey a changed person. Okay, that's a stretch, but they did see just about every nook and cranny of both parks. Each racer also got to "baptise" their shoes in order to get control #6 which was placed on one of the islands in the river. Jeff Black lead all racers, beating out Andy and son Elijah who were on their bikes. When he finished, Andy wanted to have a discussion about Lee's "bingo" controls (where one uses random luck) which made for an interesting park map. Bill Pilcher lost his Julia Davis map running between parks which he would need in order to find the last control. He hustled in to pick up a spare and headed back out to finish up the course. The final racer of the day was John Davies of New Zealand who was passing through Boise, looked up CTOC, and decided to try our local meet. John has been orienteering for over 30 years. He thought the course was great and was very impressed by all the people using each park for different activities.

Finally, there was lots of walk-up interest from individuals wanting to know more about orienteering, unfortunately no takers. Hopefully this will increase the participation for future meets.

Beginner: time
Donna Goodwin & Maggie Gregory 0:19:45
Maggie Kidd 0:26:27
Carly Turpen (and Family)0:40:00


Intermediate: time
Dondi Black 1:41:32
Karin Didisse DNF


Advanced:time
Jeff Black 0:53:16
Doug LaMott 1:09:45
Andy & Elijah Hill (bike)1:10:56
Bill Pilcher1:48:50
John Davies2:13:40


Hope to see you all at Bear Basin

CTOC members go 1, 2, 3

Congratulations to club members Masha Velichko, Sergey Velichko, and Ole Bergset who were respectively first, second, and third in their groups at the 2008 USA Classic Championships that took place in Wyoming past weekend.

Meet Results: Idaho City - 06/28/08

June in Idaho City. The blooming flowers, the singing birds, and, AH! the bleating sheep.

June 28th saw the inaugural use of the new Gold Rush Hills map. While this map more-or-less covered the same area as the previous Bear Run map, the use of a real basemap and the services of world-class mapper made for a night and day difference in quality.

After the heat nearly killed off a large proportion of the club members in July 2007, the annual Idaho City meet was moved up a month to June. The strategy worked -- although Saturday was quite toasty for June, it stayed quite pleasant for most of the day. And, luckily, the sheep herd that had been passing through earlier in the week had made it north of the competition area by Saturday.

The course itself turned out to be a 16-control score course, with all controls worth 10 points, and a 10 point per minute overtime penalty in the competitive class. Surprisingly, nobody actually went over the 2-hour time limit.

As the all-powerful meet director, I divided up the results into two sections: individuals who seemed to be going for speed (the "Running Raving Nutters") and those individuals and families (those "Enjoying the Woods") who were traveling at a more leisurely pace.

In the Nutters division, Lee Scott had a runaway victory, finishing a full 20 minutes ahead of Jeff Black, who in turn finished over 20 minutes ahead of Ole Bergset. Rounding out the finishers who managed to bag all 16 controls was Bill Leahy, who still finished with well over five minutes to spare. Bill Pilcher bagged nearly every control, and finished in a very respectable time. Karin Didisse (she of the ice-covered wastes of McCall) decided a round dozen was more than sufficient when running in the heat. And, rounding out the Nutters, Dave "Seconds Count" Bergset won the coveted Use-as-much-clock-as-you-can prize by finishing with five seconds to spare.

Running Raving Nutters Divisiontimecontrols
Lee Scott62:49:0016
Jeff Black82:26:0016
Ole Bergset105:25:0016
Bill Leahy113:22:0016
Bill Pilcher109:05:0015
Karin Didisse101:20:0012
David Bergset119:55:0011

The Enjoying the Woods division isn't about competition, so take the following table as a list of results, not placement. Dondi Black made sure she didn't get any advice from the meet director this year (see last year's meet report for why), and did a nice job bagging 8 controls in a bit over an hour and a half. The Ritzenthaler's started and finished multiple times, so I never really figured out their time or their number of controls. Mea Culpa. The fact that they actually came up and orienteered while playing host to various viruses was still an impressive accomplishment. Brad Lowe and his anonymous friend (c'mon Brad, she's got to have a name) also bagged 8 controls in a most challenging area. The Hall Family made their first foray out of the foothill and park maps and into the woods (and for those of you who have yet to orienteer in the woods, it's quite a jump from open land) managing to bag seven controls, and finish without screaming "never again!" (at least, not within my hearing).


Enjoying the Woods Divisiontimecontrols
Dondi Black 91:26 8
Brad Lowe + 1 150:10 8
Hall Family 145:007
Ritzenthaler Family ~51:00?

The after-meet festivities were marred by Trudy's still not having re-opened after their fire this winter. The owner's promised me that they would be open by the time of the next meet (one would hope, as this is pretty much the only place worth eating at in Idaho City).

All-in-all, a most enjoyable day of orienteering. Thanks to everyone who showed up, and a special thanks to those who hung around until the end and helped pick up controls!

Andy

Karin Didisse and Dave Ritzenthaler ask Kayla for directions to the next control

Karin wonders how far she'd roll down the hill if she tripped...