Got Lucky...Again

I have been a member of CTOC since Dec 2019 and while I really look forward to our events out in the hills/mountains I also look forward to the events in the "off" months because that means we are closer to town, have maps that many can use for fine tuning skills and we get to see faces new and familiar!

We haven't been to Columbia Village in four (4) years so it was time we revisited the area.  We started with walking the original course and after the almost 4.5 miles we understood the vast area that we would be covering.  We took several trips out to the area to compare the old with the new, while many of the locations remained the same we did throw in a few changes.  Big thanks to Sergey for updating the base map and making it more current.

As we headed out around 7am to set controls a few stray rain drops splattered on the windshield and I found myself thinking "It wasn't supposed to rain!", but as we set controls and prepped for the event we got away with only a few sprinkles. Thank goodness I didn't plan this for Sunday or we would have been very soggy - got lucky...again.  This was only my second time using actual controls as I normally do an urban (QnA event) and as many of you noticed a few things didn't go according to plan.  Luckily the mistakes didn't really impact anything major except a little confusion but I've learned - Print a master map (once someone shows me how!).  I know this will come in very handy for my next event if I remember a year from now.

Since this area was built for speed I proceeded to use all 26 controls for our advance course and outside of the numbering mishap received lots of positive feedback.  We had 4 brave souls take on this course and the times were very competitive with less than 15 minutes separating them .  Ted squeaked out the top spot, but we are giving Sergey bonus points since he pre ran the course and made some minor modifications as he went to ensure it worked out for the rest of the field.

   1 Ted Smith                    39:36 
   2 Sergey Velichko          40:29 
   3 Jason Russel                43:08 
   4 Dustin/Heidi Thomas  52:16 

The Intermediate map was a big hit this month with a total of 13 teams.  It too was a very competitive field with Eli coming in first and Belen finishing only six (6) seconds behind him, neither looked very taxed at the effort - the joys of youth!  Eli and his dad started together but Eli came flying into the finish and when asking where he dad was he simply shrugged and said "I dusted him", haha.  Belen is rather new to Orienteering (to my knowledge) and she too crushed the course and overtook John for second.  Teach him to invite family to play with us! We even had a tie for 10 with Derek and Austin clocking the exact same time.

   1 Eli Arambarri                35:28 
   2 Belen Hoobing              35:34 
   3 John Murray                  39:36 
   4 David Byrd                    43:48 
   5 Torin Ford                     46:03 
   6 John Arambarri             47:21 
   7 Leslie Perez                  57:03 
   8 Eloise Hoobing             1:01:07 
   9 Cat Stauffer                  1:07:13 
  10 Derek Duval                1:17:33 
  10 Austin Agosta              1:17:33 
  12 Jerry Stewart               1:22:13 
  13 Lois Urizar                  1:35:20 

As I mentioned earlier I enjoy the courses close to town as this is when we see the most first timers (or new to CTOC) come out of the woodwork and this event was no exception.  Most of our Beginner/Sport courses were all newbies; it was great to see that all of them ejoyed the beginner enough to stick around for the Sport.  We had several groups of Royal Rangers (similar to boy scouts join us) and it was great to see them get acclimated to the map and take off in what you could tell would be a very competitive morning for them.  Team Jamie took the lead in both courses by nearly two (2) minutes.  Thomas Bernier came all the way from 2T to play with us and then stayed to chat with some at the start/finish - hopefully he makes the trek again!

Beginner

   1 Team Jamie                 13:03 
   2 Team Brendan             15:41 
   3 Thomas Bernier          15:56 
   4 Team Zack                  16:00 
   5 Ryan MacDermott      17:41 
   6 Amy Noyes                 20:11 
   7 Team Kendall             24:18 
   8 Mary Jane Byrne        53:57 

Sport

   1 Team Jamie                  26:16 
   2 Team Brandon             28:49 
   3 Team Zack                   34:36 
   4 Amy Noyes                  35:11 
   5 Ryan MacDermott       40:30 
   6 Thomas Bernier           47:15 
   7 Pete Paradis                 51:40 
   8 Mary Jane Byrne        1:29:36 

As always my thank yous go to:

• Sergey for again updating the base map and pre-running the course to ensure it was ready for everyone else and helping pick up controls at the end.
• John for always being helpful in jogging my memory on how to work on and print the course maps.  
• Frank for getting up early on a Saturday and helping me set controls and getting coffee!  I appreciate that you support my crazy hobbies!
• My Dad for walking the course several times, getting lots of miles in, helping to set controls in the sprinkles, and hanging out at the start/finish while we ran the event and then of course helping pick up the controls and load the car at the end.

See you all Dec 9 at Ann Morrison!