By Nancy Lindeman

How many Santas in front of the house? Who is on Santa's left? How many gifts by the Menorah? What do the bears have on their feet?

What fun it was to be running or walking around the Willow Glen neighborhood on a cool and rainy night, looking for the answers to these and other questions at the "controls" that were all at decorated houses. What a beautiful neighborhood!

People started arriving at the Willow Glen Elementary School cafeteria right at 5:00. Most people went out on the mass start at 5:50. This year, for a change, we passed out the maps ahead of time so people could plan their route.

Two of the controls had their lights off, so that made it more challenging for people to see the answers.

Controls were all worth 10 points, except for those numbered 200+, which were worth 20 points.

It was good to see that many people did show up to go out on the course on a December night in the rain.

There was a tight-knit group of strong runners competing in the 90-minute event, and it was won by a large margin by Jason Reed, beating BAOC regulars Dennis Wilkinson and Rex Winterbottom by 50 points. Jason was in 5th place in 2010 and 4th place in 2011. Rex was in 1st place in 2010 and 2011.

Penny DeMoss was the first woman in the 90-minute event for the second year in a row.

Brad Wetmore, the course setter for the first three years of this event, had the "home field advantage" in the 60-minute event and beat last year's winner, Steve Hass by just 20 points.

Vicki Woolworth was the first woman in the 60-minute event.

It was good to see a few families out there.

Congratulations to Rosemary Johnson, this year's BAOC Service Award winner. Thanks, Rosemary, for all you do to help the club!

Thanks for making this event possible go to:

• Tony Pinkham and Steve and David Harrison, the course setters, for all their hard work on this event.
• Will Gilmore for being the co-event director for this event.
• Steve Haas and Ev and Jean Beuerman for handling registration.
• Bob Cooley for printing the maps.
• Rex Winterbottom, our Event Coordinator, who helped get this event on the schedule.
• Brad Wetmore and Chuck Spalding for being so helpful in updating the webpage for the event.
• Trinka Gillis for presenting the BAOC Service Award.
• Brad Wetmore for setting up the on-line sign-up form.
• Marina Keeting for handling the insurance.

And thanks to everyone for coming on a rainy night to our fourth annual Willow Glen Holiday Lights event. Many of you said that you had a great time. We hope to see you next year.

Total   Raw      Total     Penalties   Incorrect
Pl  Name(s)                      Score  Score     Time     Late  Wrong   Control

1  Brad Wetmore                  240    240    00:56:00+    0     0
2  Steve Haas                    220    220    00:59:00+    0     0
3  Vicky Woolworth               150    150    00:54:32     0     0

90-Minute Division ↑

Total   Raw      Total     Penalties   Incorrect
Pl  Name(s)                      Score  Score     Time     Late  Wrong   Control

1  Jason Reed                    490    490    01:28:45     0     0
   2  Rex Winterbottom              440    440    01:29:19     0     0
   3  Dennis Wilkinson              440    440    01:29:30     0     0
   4  Matej Sebo                    400    440    01:27:00+    0     0
   5  Graham Brew                   350    360    01:30:00+   10     0
   6  Penny DeMoss                  300    300    01:29:30     0     0
   6  Steve Gregg                   300    330    01:29:50     0    30      20
   8  Erika Kikuchi                 260    280    01:31:00+   20     0
   9  Greg & Tracy                  280    220    01:29:00+    0    60      42,48
  10  Andrea, Steve, Samantha,
        & Nicholas Blonstein        190    190    01:24:00+    0     0
  11  Diane Appel                   180    180    01:28:00+    0     0
  12  Steve Beuerman                180    180    01:29:00+    0     0
  13  Fyodor & Masha Konkov,
        Julia Doubson               170    170    01:28:00+    0     0
  14  Sebo family                   140    140    01:27:28     0     0
  15  Nick Corsano, Esther Heller   130    130    01:27:00+    0     0
  16  Bodo & Chu                    130    100    01:23:39     0    30      20
  17  Karen Haas                      0     30    01:13:00+    0    30      38

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Notes:

1. I (Steve) failed to always collect the times precise to the second and, in many cases, just recorded within which minute the finisher arrived. This means that the point deductions are correct, but we cannot rank competitors with equal points. This only affected one pair of runners (Penny DeMoss and Steve Gregg), so they are shown as 6th equal. My apologies. Times where the seconds are not recorded are shown with a "+" sign.
2. Incorrect answers were noted for several controls, so we checked how many correct and incorrect answers there were for those controls: Control 20 (12 correct, 2 incorrect); Control 38 (9 correct, 1 incorrect); Control 42 (7 correct, 1 incorrect); Control 48 (13 correct, 1 incorrect). So we believe these control answers were sufficiently clear and the incorrect point deductions should hold.
3. We made a mistake with the house number on control 4 (1136 not 1138), so anyone marking anything that suggested that they had visited that control was given the 10 points
4. The lights were out at controls 15 and 17, so anyone marking anything that suggested that they had visited that control was given the 10 points.