Orienteering on St. Patrick's Day at Ann Morrison Park

Initially, I’d like to thank some of those who made this meet possible.  First, my brother Bill who devoted numerous patient hours tutoring me on the use of OCAD, assisted with field checking at Ann Morrison Park (which cost me a lost compass and some beer and pizza at the Flying Pie), printed the maps, furnished donuts & coffee at the meet and refused to let me store wet, soggy control bags in the club’s storage locker.  My wife, Caroll, and neighbors (Bev and Mel) who collated and water proofed the maps which were distributed throughout the Advance Course.   Good friend, Ole, who provided shelter during the cold, wet, pre-dawn hours while him & Bill divvied up the unpleasant task of setting out the controls in the rain (and they later retrieved these controls/hardware after the meet).  Ellen Crosby who captured and shared her excellent photographs, documenting the meet.  Relatively new CTOC member, Melanie Wright, who checked punches and helped w/times at the finish area.   Finally, my sincere thanks and appreciation go to all those who showed up and participated in this meet.

The Morgan Clan braving the elements.

There were three courses offered: a classic 1 mile beginner course with 8 controls, a classic 2 mile intermediate course with 10 controls, and a ‘non-classic’ 3 mile advance course with 17 controls.  ‘Non-classic’ in the sense that advance course participants were not provided a standard course map with control descriptions; but rather, they had to rely on maps secured to every other control throughout the course.   These maps would only present the next two controls with associated descriptions; thereby, requiring runners to utilize memory.  Once this new concept was explained to and understood by John Murray, I grew confident that any and all participants could understand it (except, as it turned out, for Sergey).  Sergey asked to see the meet director’s master map of the entire 17 control advance course after his time had started.  With seconds ticking, Sergey studied this map for approximately 2 minutes, returned it to the meet director and then took off with his familiar gait for point 1 completing the course without looking at any other map.  It remains undecided whether Sergey’s flagrant display of memorization skill constitutes a technical violation of the meet director’s unpublished rules.  Two other potential violations of these same unpublished rules were committed by Ben when he opted for efficiency by taking point 5S out of its ‘intended’ order and Todd when he focused on the map at 6M and forgot to punch. 

Sergey waiting for Bill to punch so he could get on with his life and the course.

Technical violations aside, here are the unofficial results  (please submit any protests,  printed and double -spaced,  along with a $15.00 'consideration fee' directly to the Meet Director):

BEGINNER
Name	Time
** Perhaps opted for the local Pubs, as none showed up for the Beginner’s Course

INTERMEDIATE
Name	Time
Doug LaMott	20:36
Jeff Decker & Donna Goodwin	36:45
The Morgan Clan (Emily, Nikolai & Meksi)	47:30
Jeff Harvey	53:40

  

ADVANCED
Name	Time
Ben Brock	29:31
Sergey Velichko	30:30
Greg Davidson	34:29
Jay Morgan	37:30
Jeff Black	38:44
Bill Leahy	39:20
Melanie Schuster	39:28
Todd Dinkelman	40:45
John Murray	42:50
Karin Didisse	48:20
Bill Pilcher	49:00
Doug LaMott	50:19
Melanie Wright	54:40

Our next meet is Saturday - April 7, 2012 at Stewart Gulch East.  Masha/Sergey Velichko will direct.  Since Sergey is not competing this would be a good chance for most of us to finish higher in the standings than usual.

RUSS PILCHER

MEET DIRECTOR