From course setter Mikkel Conradi:
The courses turned out to be slightly on the short side as promised. Winning times on the advanced courses ranged from 56:07 on the Brown to 1:07:07 on the Green, with Red and Blue in between. There were actually 4 runners within 43 seconds on the Brown course, a close contest won by Joe Scarborough with two seconds to spare to Will Gilmore, who was then chased by Gary Kraght and Chuck Spalding. Jane Melia was the best woman with a time of 1:04:38, followed by Anna Zaster and Julia Pushkar.
Brad Wetmore saw a comfortable 4-minute win on the Green course, followed by Dan Greene and Evan Custer. A similar gap was observed on the Red course, where Pierre Delforge managed to outpace both Tapio Karras and Ido Green. Ingert Svard had a strong race, finishing 5th overall with a time of 1:04:38 — the best female runner on Red.
At some point when results for the Blue course were ticking in, Mattias Vangbo held a convincing 10-minute lead over Andrejus Masalkovas and Vladimir Gusiatnikov. However, his time of 1:08:42 was finally beat rather thoroughly by Mattias Eriksson, who outran (or outsmarted) his countryman with an excellent run of 1:01:35. When I said the courses would be on the short side, I didn't imagine anyone would break 70 minutes! Penny DeMoss was the best woman with 1:27:42.
Most of the feedback on the courses was positive. The course-setting strategy was to create a relatively large number of legs out of a relatively small number of controls, and I feel like this was successful and well received. However, a few runners did have problems with controls #34 and #38. For #34, it turned out that there were several man-made objects within the circle, and which one was encountered first depended on course and route choice. As a course setter, I had not spotted these other objects, so I apologize to everyone who lost time due to this control. For #38, the reentrant may have been further South than mapped. There were no other reentrants on that hill, but in the future I'll make sure to pay better attention and avoid areas where the map seems a bit wonky.
The hardest course to set was the Orange course in Skyline. This map has a lot of similarities with Joaquin Miller: Trails, steep hills, and green stuff. However, the Orange course did have several legs where shortcuts could save time. Three runners managed to keep their times under an hour. The race was won by Dewey DuMond with a time of 55:57. Shortly behind him finished Ragnar Borg who walked the entire course carrying his son Emil on his back.
From event director Terry Farrah:
We enjoyed beautiful weather, sunny but not too hot. This is a popular venue and we had been exceeding our permit limit of 200 (75 in Monte Bello) in recent years so I tried to keep the publicity low-key; it appears that we came in just under those limits this year.
Due to new requirements from the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District, we instituted a few measures to increase our emergency preparedness. A First Aid person was stationed at the event center, a person with a radio was stationed in the remote reaches of the Monte Bello hills, and special emergency response maps were distributed. The single reported injury was taken care of by a band-aid.
Mikkel and I apologize for the lack of control description sheets and for a poor organization of the self-serve advanced Start area. The latter may have cost some runners between a few seconds to as much as 1-2 minutes. The self-serve Start and Finish otherwise worked well, and saved us the need for several additional staff.
I saw about 10 people at Dan Greene's intermediate orienteering clinic. Thanks, Dan, for offering something that is clearly needed and appreciated by newer orienteers.
Many thanks to the wonderful rangers at the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District, especially Elisa Wickham, whom many of you met or saw on Sunday. Among other things, they drove water out for us, and put up large industrial-size "PED XING" signs east and west of our Skyline crossing point.
And many thanks to the many orienteers who helped. Many of those listed below worked overtime or pitched in on tasks besides the one(s) they are listed after. I no doubt left out one or two names; please know that you are all appreciated:
Permit and Insurance: Rosemary Johnson
Equipment: Alan Glendinning, Mark Blair
Maps: Bob Cooley
Hanging Controls: Lauren Knight
Setup: Vladimir Gusiatnikov, John Turner, Parag Gupta, Brad Wetmore
Parking: Andrew Barros, Russell Neilson
Staffed Control: Kelly Wells, Chuck Spalding, Cathy Bolger
Registration: Ev and Jean Beuerman
Instruction: Alex Saltman, Dan Greene
Starts: Clare, Ken, and Elena Livak, Peter Graham, Matthias Kohler
Finishes: Brad Wetmore, Nick Corsano, Chad Davis, Peter Graham
Manual-Punch Results: Philip and Daniel Kopisch
First Aid: Bill Straka, Wendell Doman, Scott Aster
Crossing Guard: Justin Anderson, Peter Graube, Nancy Lindeman
Epunch: Trinka Gillis, Steve Beuerman, Evan Custer, Bjorn Widerstrom, perhaps others
Control Pickup: Harold DeMoss (organizer), Penny DeMoss, Andrew Masalkov, Theo Verhoeven, Luc Poppe, Wendell Doman, Matthias Kohler, Steve Haas, Peter Graube, Daniel and Manfred Kopisch