Night-O at Bond Park (Feb 2012)

Night-O is among my favorite events and is probably the most anticipated one. We only do it once a year after all. So, yeah, I've been counting days :)

Also Mihai somehow always manages to add extra twist to the event, whether it is a flood or, in this case, bitter cold and wind. Seriously, it was the first and only really cold evening during the whole winter! After the finish, having crossed creeks a few times, I realized that my pants and shoes were covered in a thin layer of ice! Now, this hadn't happened to me before - even during winter orienteering back in Belarus.

I am not going into too much details about my route - you can see it below, but here are a few highlights:

1. I left the western part of the map for the end because I knew that I was bound to get wet there and I really really didn't want to run the whole course with wet feet in such cold weather. Also I wasn't particularly looking forward getting into thorns which were abundant on that side - and wanted to postpone it as much as I could.

2. I went for 46 right from the start, even though, I knew it was a good finishing control. Still it was on my way, so why not take it right away. I caught up with Brian on the very next control, so it was a right choice.

3. Despite not taking ideal routes from 57 to 58 and 58 to 62, I was able to keep up with Brian. We met at every control up until 56 where he went east and I continued north. I was at 17 mins mark there and figured that there was a high probability of taking all the controls, so naturally I was looking for a route which would include all of them.

4. And I got into trouble on the very next control! Couldn't find it from above, went down to the creek, met Tanya, figured the control got to be higher and more to the west and indeed it was there. Lost a minute or so there.

5. Next two controls also proved to be challenging. First I missed re-entrant with 55 and had to come back. Then I couldn't spot 61 on the hill. Kiwi helped me there! She ran to me and then back to Joseph who was at the control. I simply followed her :)

6. Met Tanya again at 42, then took the trail around the visitors center. Was running and thinking that I should have gone straight instead of going around (but looking at the map now, I could see that the trail was a good option).

7. Reached 44 at 33 min mark - plenty of time left, though, I rightly suspected that it'd be harder in the west part. It was.

8. Crossed the knee deep creek between 54 and 59, tried to climb steep bank on the other side, fell, eventually climbed the bank, ran to the control and realized that I lost the map! Oh, no! I thought it was all over and my map was flowing down the creek... Went back to the bank where I fell and to my great relief found the map - it was hanging on one of those thorny vines.

9. Crossed the creek again between 59 and 66 - being already wet I didn't care anymore :)

10. Couldn't find 68 for a while. It's a tough place without good attack points. I turned into the green a bit too early, but eventually found the control by walking east.

11. Crossed the creek between 65 and 52 and got seriously stuck on some thorny vines. Got scratched all over and managed to make a deep cut on my left thumb, so it started to drip blood to the flashlight handle and the map quite profusely.

12. I had 5 mins left at 51 - just enough to take the last control and finish on time!

All the controls in the bag and final time: 59.52 - couldn't have been better!



Huge thank you to Mihai for yet another great Night-O!

Preparing for Bubba Goat

Went out today and set half of the ribbons. What a beautiful day, the forest was absolutely gorgeous, sun was shiny and mushrooms all over!

The courses are not approved yet, but I am pretty sure that this set of controls won't be questioned by the park. Stumbled on a ribbon for coming 10/16 event and set a Bubba Goat ribbon alongside it. Ha! I guess I have an unfair advantage now :) But no worry - I still can't run and will be walking next Sunday... It's funny how I can walk 7-8 kms without problems, but can't run even 50 yards. Oh well... I hope it'll get resolved eventually.

Meanwhile, half of the ribbons are set. The other half will have to wait until the park approves the courses.

One last thing, I hope to see you all this Wednesday at Joseph's house (see here). If you would like to help the club or just interested in the way it operates, by all means COME!

What does it take to organize an Advanced event?

After talking to Roman last Sunday, I thought, it'd be good to put it all down on paper. What does it take to organize an Advanced event? How long does it take? What kind of time commitment is needed? What are the preparation steps and how difficult are they?

Surprisingly, it is not hard at all to put up such event - pretty much anyone who is comfortable with running advanced courses could do it! Time commitment is rather small, it's fun and a great training exercise. In fact, this is THE BEST way to quickly and drastically improve your map reading skills.

Sounds like a shameless advertisement already, but yes, if you are reading it, I want to ask you to seriously consider organizing one of those event in 2012! You won't regret it.

So what's involved?

Step 1 (designing the courses)
Time required: 2 hours (if you do it for the first time), ~30 mins if you've done it before
This might be challenging if you do it for the first time: you would need to download and install Condes (special software we use), download maps, spend some time getting familiar with the software and actually design the courses. It's much easier to do for an advanced event, though, because you'll be basically designing just one course - Red. Green and Brown will be subsets of Red. There are instructions on the BOK site on how to design the course, I won't go into details here. Remember though, that many people (me including) will be happy to review your design and suggest improvements. It can be done via email and the whole process should not take more than 2 hours of your time throughout several days. Of course this step can (and in case of Umstead should) be done 1-2 months before the event.

Step 2 (get the park approval)
Time required: 30 mins
Different parks have different requirements, but for the most parks a simple call or email would suffice. You'd need to talk to a person in charge there and see if they are OK with our date and whether they have a preference for a start location. In some cases, you'd need to reserve a shelter as well. Umstead has the toughest requirements - they actually want to review the courses, so you'd need to send them the courses in JPG format at least 1 month before the event for review and approval. You might have to go through a few iterations with them as well. BOK site has all the contact information and requirements for all the parks we use (Joseph or Mihai would need to provide you access to that page). If you feel uncomfortable with this step, I am sure, you could get help. I remember Joseph getting all the approvals for the first few events I did (thank you!).

Step 3 (announce the event on the BOK site)
Time required: 15 mins
You could do it yourself or ask someone else to put an announcement up, doesn't matter.

Step 4 (get equipment)
Time required: 1 hour
You would need to pick up all the equipment from the last event director or from Joseph's house. It's just a driving time.

Step 5 (set ribbons)
Time required: 3-5 hours
This is the most important part and a great training exercise for you. The idea is to find all the spots where controls should be, check and double-check them from several attack points, see if all the important features around the control are indeed on the map (if not, consider moving the control a bit), and, of course, hang an orange ribbon with "BOK - date" mark on it.
It is done 1 week before the event. I used to split it between Saturday and Sunday. Now I do it during one 3 hours hike. I don't run when setting ribbons. Basically it is a long thoughtful hike and you get a chance to enjoy the forest and explore the map in great details, like you never could during a normal run.

Step 6 (adjust and cleanup the courses/controls)
Time required: 15-45 mins
After all the ribbons are set, you usually would need to move a few controls on the map a bit. You would also need to play a bit more with Condes: clean up control circles, set numbers right and position the legend. Again, someone could help you with that kind of cleanup - in that case this step will not take more than 15 mins of your time.

Step 7 (print the maps)
Time required: 1 hour
This is done on Friday before the event.
If Joseph is in town, you can ask him to print the maps. Otherwise, use Fedex/Kinkos print online service. It's pretty easy and self explanatory. You would need to export map with courses into PDF file to do that (PrimoPDF freeware is used for that).
Then you would need to pick the printed maps up. So some driving time will be required here.

Step 8 (hang the controls)
Time required: 1.5-2 hours
One day before the event you would need to go and hang the controls (taking off the ribbons). This is an easy job, because you will already know the area intimately after setting ribbons. You can run if you wish - I prefer to walk and enjoy the forest. Some people prefer to hang the controls in the morning right before the event, but if you don't like rushing things up, just set them on Saturday.

Step 9 (download sign-up spreadsheet)
Time required: 5 mins
Every person who registeired for the event will appear in the "registration" spreadsheet on the BOK site (Mihai or Joseph can give you access to it). Ideally, everybody should register before noon on Friday, so you would know how many maps to print. In reality there are always a few people who register late, so it's better to print the spreadsheet at the last possible moment. You will use this spreadsheet during the event for marking start/finish times - much easier comparing to regular events.

Step 10 (run the event)
Time required: 5 hours
Come 30 mins early, set parking signs, set the start place. During the advanced event you won't have to deal with registration or money, as everybody is pre-registered and everything is paid for already (members go free), so it's all very easy and relaxing.

Step 11 (post the results)
This is pretty challenging from technical stand point. Someone will have to show you how to do it, so for the first time I would suggest that you ask someone else to do this step.

So in total you'd be looking at something like 16 hours of various activities, with 11 of those being "preparation" time spread over 1-2 month before the event.

Think about it :)

Aug 21 Results

Posted the results: http://backwoodsok.org/advanced-event-at-schenck-forest-aug-21-results

Ribbons at Schenck

Set the ribbons for the Aug 21 advanced event yesterday - took me three hours of very careful walking - but the knee held out. Got some pain at the end, but it's clearly getting stronger. Yay!

Didn't have to move any controls, but will need to update the map a bit - a trail disappeared, a gully went in wrong direction (well, it was always plotted wrongly, we just never used it...) - this kind of things. I won't be updating areas where the forest was cut down though... Remembering Artem's warning I didn't put any controls close to the Reedy Creek road, so the courses were fine, but I'd say we lost about 10% of the forest due to the cutting and logging. I hope that area will be seeded with new trees, but who knows.

There is another area where trees were cut down - in the north-west corner, right behind the fence. I guess technically it's not the park - looks like this area was cut down for some kind of housing or business development. Oh well...

Also get ready for some mud walking - looks like the lake went bust a few days ago - a large area along the creek is all covered with a thick layer of mud (including the trail).

The courses look good though, I really like how they came out.

See you on Sunday!

Score-O at Lake Johnson

It was so hot... And my knee hurts - 3.0 hours of controls setting/running/pick-up in one day is probably too much for me to handle it this point. But I did reasonably well on the course: 29 controls in 55 minutes, despite walking half of the time. I am also quite happy how we were able to pull this event up - everybody chipped in and everything went smoothly without a dedicated event director.

I decided against describing every control I took, but will outline some decisions I had to make before and during the run regarding the course. For me Score-Os are always about judging time and remaining strength and then making right decisions based on it.

From the very beginning I knew that I absolutely wanted to take all controls in the middle of the map (from the road up to 59). I figured that I would need about 30 mins to do that. So the question was where to spend the other half hour. One option was to go behind the road and take everything there (maybe with exception of 79). Another option was to take controls in the eastern part of the map and possibly take 52,53,54 (or 57) if time allows. Second option had potential for more points, but looked longer and I would have to run on a paved trail a lot - which I don't like doing. So I decided to take my chances with option 1 and went there right after the start.

I had a few small problems on 52, 62 and 73 - couldn't spot controls right away and spent extra 30-40 secs on each one, but everything else was OK. I was getting tired quickly though - heat... Anyway, I reached 78 at 17-18 minutes mark and had to make a decision regarding 79. I was worried that I soon won't be able to run anymore and would not have time for the middle section, 600 extra meters just for 1 control seemed too much. I decided against taking 79 (as it turned out I would have been better off taking it, so it wasn't a correct decision).

Anyway, I went back to the parking lot taking 3 remaining controls along the way and reached the parking lot at 29 mins mark. I had my 30 mins for the middle part - good! I couldn't run anymore - bad... Fortunately, the middle part proved to be smaller then I expected - I actually took everything there in 25 mins while mostly walking.

One good thing I did was to take 42 and 46 during the run east - it made the way to the finish very easy and without hills (44-43-41-40). I also took the first 4 controls in this order 42-48-46-56, thus avoiding tough green stretch between 42 and 46.

I reached 51 at 40 mins mark. 20 mins was more then enough to get back to the finish (that's where taking 79 would have helped). But alas, I had to spend extra 5 mins to go for 60, and it was painful because of the hill on a way there... I got it and had 17 mins to get back at that point. Quite enough, but not enough for risking 65 - so I didn't. Turned back and went to the finish taking controls along the shore. 7 mins later I was at 44 and realized that I can leisurely walk the rest of the way and still be on time. I walked and finished at 55:02 - extremely exhausted despite taking it easy at the end.

Here is my route (blue - mostly running, brown - mostly walking)

Will we swim tomorrow?

With all these rains the past few days I have growing suspicion that people will have to swim tomorrow... One of the controls is set in a way that the only reasonable way to/from it is across a creek which is usually knee deep...

To late to change it now. Good luck, everyone...