April 13 event in the North Umstead Park.

Maybe we should skip "13"s in the future events calendar after all... There was a serious injury today on the red course. Nadya had a head injury, lost a lot of blood and ended up in the hospital with 16 stitches and concussion. She called me this evening and seemed to be recovering fine, but it was a scare. She was also fortunate that Charles was running right by soon after she got hurt. But in the future, please, never ever go on the course without a whistle.

The day started very well though. Perfect weather for orienteering. Tanya and Michael went to Gary's advanced orienteering class (and, by the way, had a great and useful lesson), while I set 20 or so white, yellow and orange controls (2 advanced ones as well). I funny thing happened to me at #43. This advanced control was close to the road, so a week ago I put the ribbon there literally on the ground. Today I was there looking for the ribbon and couldn't find it. I knew it was supposed to be there, so I looked closely and then I saw a turtle sitting right on top of the ribbon and thus hiding it :-) I hanged the control on top and let it be. I wonder if anyone saw the turtle later on at this control.

At 11 AM everything was ready except for the printer... It wouldn't work. No matter what I was doing it wouldn't print. It messed up the event a bit, as Tanya had to explain to everyone that the printer was out, but that download box was still needed (thanks to Memund and Ken for telling us about it). We also tried to write down start/finish time, but I am afraid didn't do it for everyone. I really hope that the problem was with the printer and not the download box, so the results will be there.

Anyway, Josef was the first to start and the event went on. We had a lot of reds and only a few yellows. Kind of strange distribution - for some reason not many kids were in the forest today. It looked like that advanced runners were pleased with the courses: I set controls very low and sometime even hidden, so they could be found only if you find the exact feature - and everyone seemed to like the challenge.

I got thanks for White and Yellow too. The only problematic course was Orange: a few long times and DNFs there and one complain about a control being set incorrectly (in wrong gully). During the controls pick up I went and double-checked that control (#51, #6 on the course), tried it from 4 different attack points and I can confirm that the control was set 100% correctly. Below is the picture with the attack points (from top to bottom):

• leave the trail, notice a dry ditch and a gully, then move south-east to the right gully
• notice a stone wall (bridge) on the creek and take a bearing to the gully
• notice a stony ground by the creek and take a bearing to the gully
• start from the tooth shaped big rocks on the other side of the creek, take a bearing to the big gully and then go north to the right one

There were a few late finishers, but everyone got back. Artem and Bill helped with controls pick-up, Michael took a lot of white and yellow ones and Tanya and I a few others. All in all we were done by 4.30 - rather quick!

Huge thanks to everyone who helped:

• Bill, Artem, Joseph and Ruth with controls pick-up
• Ken with the class (Michel and Gary also offered to teach the class, but Ken was the first)
• Joseph and Ruth with course consulting
• Ken and Joseph with results
  

Cheers!

P.S. One of the reasons we were so quick with the controls pick-up was that Joseph and Ruth asked us to leave Brown and Green course in the park, so they would run on Monday - so we did. I moved the last control down a bit (to hide it) and inadvertently added one Orange control to these left over Brown and Green courses. It's going to be harder now :-)