2021 Cary New Year’s street orienteering results
After a wave of showers forced us to postpone the event, we managed to hold it on January 2 instead of January 1. The weather was somewhat dry, but a bit colder than expected. Still, 22 runners/teams attempted the challenge, some running full steam, others walking, jogging or pushing their kids in a stroller.
There were a few issues with the course and the map, for which I apologize. The Little Free Library in downtown didn’t have its charter number listed on it. The rain on the day before made the easy entrance to Cary Elementary a swamp. I misidentified a bird house as a bird feeder. But overall everything went fine.
It is also great when the participants know things that I don’t: such as calling a horse a dapple, or identifying the kind of tree in the corner of the parking lot as crepe myrtle instead of just naming the birdhouse. I would never have expected those answers
One issue that came up is the problem of crossing the railroad tracks, in particular, whether crossing the tracks at any location other than at official crossings is fine. Since I didn’t have a rule on this I didn’t penalize anybody for crossing in the woods or running along the tracks, but this was dangerous. In the future we’ll have to form and enforce an official policy on that.
Thanks to everyone for participating, I hope you managed to discover a few places in downtown that you hadn’t known about before. I was glad to see some new faces, we hope to see you at our regular events in 2021!
Now the results: I knew it would be close, but I didn’t expect it to get this close. There is virtually a 5-way tie on top between some of our best runners: Robert, Brian, Vladimir, Gheorghe and Mihai.
Gheorghe attempted to get the most points, 48, but he got wrong answers for a few of them, so he finished with only 41 points. He ran 12 miles in 2 hours! Mihai, Vladimir and Brian each went for 45 points and got one answer wrong: the only difference is that Brian missed a 1-point question while the others a 2-point question. Finally, Robert went for 46 points and had a chance to win, but missed the same question that Mihai did, and finished with 44, tied with Brian. Congratulations to all of them!
It is interesting that they took very different routes but still ended up with almost identical scores. You can see some of the best routes here. Most runners decided to choose the controls in the North or West, collecting a lot of 3-point controls. Interestingly, getting all the 1 and 2 point controls would have yielded 49 points, enough to win it all without ever going too far! Maybe that would have been the best strategy?
| Name | Correct/Attempted | |
| 1 | Robert Enochs | 44/46 |
| 1 | Brian Thompson | 44/45 |
| 3 | Vladimir Stemkovski | 43/45 |
| 3 | Mihai Ibanescu | 43/45 |
| 5 | Gheorghe Fala | 41/48 |
| 6 | Ken Walsh | 35/35 |
| 6 | Dawn Hull & Christopher Morgan | 35/35 |
| 8 | Matt Craig & Adalia | 34/34 |
| 9 | David Waller | 33/33 |
| 10 | Rob Ward & family | 28/29 |
| 10 | Paul Emmerson | 28/28 |
| 12 | Andy & Mindy | 27/27 |
| 12 | Josef Trzicky | 27/27 |
| 14 | Ruth Bromer & Joseph Huberman | 26/26 |
| 15 | Ed | 22/22 |
| 15 | Nick Spittal & family | 22/23 |
| 17 | Andrea Polik | 21/21 |
| 18 | Gregory Erickson & family | 20/21 |
| 19 | Tim Arnold | 15/15 |
| 20 | Ian Shields & Pat | 14/14 |
| 20 | Jonathan Kross & family | 14/14 |
| 22 | Nadia Scharlau | 5/7 |
Detailed results, including all the controls are here. 1 indicates that the answer was correct, 0 that the answer was incorrect, missing if no answer was given. There was only one control (#54) that nobody got, everything else was visited by at least 2 participants. Conversely, there was only one control (#11) that everybody got.
Finally, the questions are available from here and the answers (and commentary) are here. I encourage you to find a quiet and dry day and try to get to the places you couldn’t visit on Saturday.