Oregon Ridge - Dec 16, 2012

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Course: Red [11 controls; 7.2 km; 220m]
Time: 2:04:06 - AttackPoint - WinSplits - RouteGadget
Actual Distance: 8.64 km / 5.37 miles

Happyland - Dec 9, 2012

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Overall, I did not have a happy time at Happyland. It took me considerably longer than usual to get there due to the fact that one of the tires on my car went flat on the 50-mile drive to the park. It took me a while to get the flat tire off the car, put the spare tire on the car, and then find a gas station with an air pump that included a tire pressure gauge so that I could make sure that the spare was properly inflated.

I originally planned to do the Blue course. I changed to the Red course because I arrived a good hour-and-a-half later than planned. I probably should have done the Green course instead. I made enough mistakes on the Red course that I ran out of time before I was able to find all the controls. I found the first 13 and was on my way to 14 when I saw someone picking up controls. I didn't stop and ask him if he had picked up 14. I took my inability to find it as an indication that he had picked it up. I didn't bother looking for 15, the final control on the course.

The biggest mistake I made was when I mistook one road for another when I was looking for control 11. If I had just consulted my compass I would have realized my mistake, 10 minutes earlier.

This makes my third DNF at Happyland. That's 3 in 4 times that I have orienteered in this part of Prince William Forest. What's crazy is that the one time I did finish a course it was a blue one; two of the three DNFs were on red courses.

Course: Red [Controls: 15; 7.4 km; 220 m]
Time: 3:10:29 - AttackPoint - WinSplits - RouteGadget
Actual Distance: 10.84 km / 6.73 miles

Great Falls, MD - Nov 18, 2012

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The weather was perfect for orienteering at Great Falls. The temperature was in the low 50s and there was a light breeze blowing.

Many of the controls on the advanced courses were close together. There were only a few that I had trouble finding.

2/128 was placed higher on the hill than I thought it would be. I made a couple sweeps along the bottom of the hill, close to the road before it occurred to me to look higher on the hill. Once I looked at where the control was supposed to be in relation to the bend in the road I realized that the logical place for me to look was at the top of the hill.

I "followed" other orienteers more frequently than I usually do. I wasn't always within sight of the orienteers that I was following. Sometimes they got a ways ahead of me but then I would see them after I rounded a turn or came to the top of a hill. Having them in front of me helped to confirm that I was headed in the right direction.

I found the beginning (11) of the second of the second butterfly loop unassisted. I was quickly passed by one orienteer and ended up following him through the first half (12-14) of the loop. About the time I lost him I was passed by another orienteer who I ended up following for the second half (15-19) of the loop and on to the next control (20) following the loop. About the time I lost him I was passed by another orienteer who I ended up following for the next few controls (21-26). I lost her after that and was on my own for the last couple controls.

Course: Advanced [Controls: 27; 7.6 km; 310 m]
Time: 2:16:10 - Winsplits - RouteGadget - AttackPoint
Actual Distance Traveled: 9.56 km / 5.94 miles

Pine Grove Furnace - Nov 11, 2012

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For the third consecutive year I participated in the Susquehanna Stumble. As usual I opted to "run" the short version of the stumble. I wanted to try the long version but the short is long enough, almost 10k, and I don't move fast enough to finish the long within the 5 hour time limit. At most I probably could have finished a third to a half of the second loop before I would have had to give up.

For the most part I didn't have any trouble finding the controls. In the first "window" I got a lot of help with the first control I was looking for, C. After I circled around once, lower on the hill than I should have been, I ran into Kathleen and Heidi and they pointed me in the right direction.

In a couple cases (7,14) I drifted off course and wound up 100 meters or more to the left or right of the control. In both cases I was able to figure out what I did wrong and find the control in the second attempt. I found the controls in the second window in alphabetical order but most people did not. Finding them in alphabetical order meant I had a very long walk from H to 14. It took me over 40 minutes.

It was a beautiful day. It was cool but not too cool. The sun helped to keep it warm even when the breeze was blowing.

After the stumble most of the QOC contingent met in Gettysburg, PA at the Allegheny Brewing Company for dinner.

I obtained my unofficial splits from my Garmin Forerunner 110 because e-punching was not used for this event.

Course: Short [Controls 15; 9.6 km; 385 m]

Time: 3:27:50 - Results
Actual Distance: 12.9 km / 8.01 miles

SPLITS
# Time Time (C) 1 13:08 13:08 2 10:38 33:46 C 14:21 48:07 A 5:07 53:14 B 3:52 57:06 6 11:34 1:08:40 7 19:39 1:28:19 8 16:03 1:44:22	# Time Time (C) D 13:08 1:57:30 E 5:09 2:02:39 F 7:32 2:10:11 G 7:30 2:17:41 H 10:03 2:27:44 14 41:28 3:09:12 15 11:35 3:20:47 Fin 7:03 3:27:50

Patuxent - Nov 4, 2012

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The weather was very nice for the 2012 Mid-Atlantic Orienteering Championship. It was a little too breezy to just stand around without a jacket or hat but it wasn't bitterly cold either.

I ended up volunteering after orienteering even though I had not planned to do so. I teamed up with Dan to pick up controls. I picked up 3, she picked up 7. Mine were a little more spread out than hers were. I also had to lug a couple unopened gallons of water back from the first control I picked up.

Instead of blue I "ran" the red course because it was my age appropriate course. I don't think I was fast enough to have an impact in the scoring. I finished 17th out of the 17 that finished the course.

For the most part I didn't have any trouble with the course. There was lots of up and down, especially in the southern section of the map. For a while, after crossing the road while on my way to 2/115 and until I crossed the road after finding 5/125 I didn't see anyone. It was kind of nice. That wasn't the case in the southern portion of the map. I ran into considerably more people there and often they were looking for the same controls as me, even though most of them were not running the same course as me.

There weren't many SVO participants but SVO is a fairly small club. The DVOA contingent seemed a little on the small side. That probably had something to do with the effects of Hurricane Sandy.


Course: Red [Controls 12; 7.2 km; 270 m]
Time: 2:11:13 - WinSplits - RouteGadget - AttackPoint
Actual Distance: 8.8 km

Hemlock Overlook - Oct 28, 2012

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I had a fairly good day of orienteering at Hemlock Overlook. I made one glaring error but aside from that I think I did a pretty good job. I've had problems at this park in the past, which for the most part I think are due to the fact that the map isn't complete. There are missing contours in places which can lead one to believe that they have found the right terrain feature when actually there are more of them in reality than there are depicted on the map.

I made my glaring error of when I left control 3/114. I should have headed southwest but instead I headed southeast. I had gone a couple hundred meters or more before I figured out why the terrain I was looking at looked nothing like what I was expecting to see. I think I got distracted when I left 3/114 by another orienteer.

Some of the trails should have been marked as broken up. In particular the trail leading northeast from 7/132 was overgrown with all sorts of vegetation. In places the trail seemed to disappear altogether but then reappear 10 meters later.

I found most of the controls on the first attempt.

Control 15/124 was in a hole in the ground but the hole was flagged with a pink streamer which kind of gave it away.

I drifted off course when searching for control 17/119 and instead wound up at 14/142. From there it was easy enough to make my way to 17/119 which was due north of 14/142.

I got thrown off a little when searching for 19/110 because some of the trails were less distinct in reality than they were on the map. I eventually ran across 3/114 and was easily able to navigate to 19/110 from there. Based on these experiences it seems that one advantage to doing the blue course in a smaller park like Hemlock Overlook is that there are more opportunities that usual to use other controls on the course to help navigate to the one you are looking for.

All in all the weather was perfect. The rain held off until well after 3 PM. I didn't see any until after 5 PM but by that time I was several miles from the Hemlock Overlook.

After orienteering I had an early dinner at Loving Hut, a vegan Vietnamese restaurant in Falls Church with Dan and Jon. The food was excellent.


Course: Blue [Controls 20; 9.1 km; 350 m]
Time: 2:50:29 - Winsplits - RouteGadget - AttackPoint
Actual Distance: 10.75 km

Swanson Road - Oct 14, 2012

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For the second consecutive year Quantico Orienteering Club had an orienteering meet in the Swanson Road Natural Area. Once again I was the meet director. On the whole I think this year's meet went well. The weather was much nicer and we had a significantly bigger turn out than last year. My biggest task leading up to the meet was recruiting people to help run the event. I wasn't completely successful in getting enough volunteers prior to the day of the meet but luckily some people stepped up at the meet to help out.

I bought more food this year than I did last year. In addition to lots of water, this year I bought 30 apples, 20 oranges, 4 one pound bags of pretzels, and 3 two pound packs of cookies. I was worried early in the day that I might have bought too much but by the end of the afternoon it was all gone.

Missteps

I may have focused a little too heavily on volunteer recruiting and buying supplies for this event. I feel as if I did not give enough time to other things like coordinating with the course designer and making sure I had everything I needed, like course notes. The course designer for the 2011 Swanson Road meet (who also happens to be the club's president) was much more pro-active than the one I was working with this year. Last year we communicated quite a bit in the week leading up to the event. That was not the case this year and I am at least partly to blame for the lack of communication.

Another area where I think I failed was in preparing the bulletin board that goes next to the registration table. It was sorely lacking in information. It should have included a copy of the meet announcement and the course notes. I did not press the course setter for course notes and he did not produce any. I also didn't realize that he wasn't going to be at the event until the night before when I was notified by one of the officers of the club. Still, I should have made a better effort to keep an open line of communication with the course setter, difficult as that might have been considering that he doesn't use e-mail and his only phone is a landline.

At the very least the bulletin board by the registration table should have included that following:
- a list of the courses offered (color, level of difficulty, control count, distance, elevation)
- a warning about areas of the map that need work (to put it politely)
- a warning about giving a wide berth to the Prince George's Radio Control Club's activities

The map

It needs some work. There are areas that are marked in white that aren't as open as the map would lead you to believe. There are also sections of the map, from what I have been told, where the contours are not representative of the actual terrain. If the map isn't updated by the next time it is used then, as indicated above, a warning should be posted for those who will be looking for controls in the areas where the map is known to be inaccurate.


A not so easy white course

The white course, one of the beginner level courses, was more difficult than it should have been. In order to find the 6th, 7th, and 8th controls on that course you needed to follow the telephone lines through some fairly thick undergrowth. I had one of the volunteers go out and place streamers through that section but that was after a number of people had attempted the course. Even with the streamers it still would have been a slog and quite difficult for anyone unfamiliar with orienteering or off-trail hiking.


Control pickup

Because the course designer wasn't at the meet I took care of organizing a group of volunteers for control pickup. I wasn't successful in getting enough volunteers for this task before the meet. One volunteer backed out at the last minute due to an injury he sustained while orienteering. In the end I managed to get five people to help me with control pickup.

After parceling out the controls I left myself with 10 controls to pickup. It took me about 70 minutes to find them all and lug them, plus two gallons of water, back to the start. During that stretch I also collected roughly half of the streamers that one of the volunteers put out for the white course. I didn't get to see all of the park but it was nice to see more than just the area surrounding the start/finish. According to my watch I walked about 2.75 miles.

While picking up controls I tripped over the remains of a barbed wire fence. I fell flat on my face but didn't sustain any injuries. When I got home I found a big tear in one of my shoes that wasn't there before; must have been the wire fence I tripped over. I'm glad I was wearing an old pair of shoes.

End of the day confusion

We had a little bit of drama after I got back from control pickup. We thought that one of the volunteers was still out looking for controls. We came to that conclusion because the control boxes he was supposed to pickup were missing. A couple people drove out to look for him. About ten minutes later we discovered that we had the missing flags but not the control boxes. After a couple phone calls, including one to the search party, we concluded that the missing control boxes must be in a bag that some else took home with them. This was confirmed later in the evening by e-mail.

Link: Swanson Road Results