We rolled the dice when we moved our annual coastal events into hurricane season. But this time, we won! Conditions were nearly perfect, and the courses were as technical and challenging as we can possibly offer. Every year, I design courses that are as hard as possible; and every year our runners impress me by crushing them. Many of the people who ran in our first event on Saturday realized how challenging navigating among the dunes can be, and decided to run shorter courses or take a break on the subsequent events. So special kudos to Rob Minto from Indiana Crossroads Orienteering, who was the only person to compete in the longest course of each race.

Other noteworthy performances came from Lina Lindberg, who won the long course on Saturday afternoon, and Vladimir Stemkovski who, along with being one of only two people to successfully finish the long night course, also won the pygmy goat on Sunday. Big congrats, too, to Lily Addicott, who won the 10 km goat on Sunday. Other winners were Stephanie Ross on the short night course, Kayden Matthews on Saturday’s short course, and Jonathan Kross on the orange night course.

On Sunday, I mentioned that by the end of each year’s coastal weekend, I typically have an idea for what I want to do next year. But this year, I’m at a bit of a loss. I think that maybe I’ll offer a sprint course on Bear Island using a map with 1m contour intervals, no vegetation mapping, and a 1:5000 scale. But beyond that, what should we do? And when should we do it? If you have ideas for fun events out there next year, please let me know and I’ll take it on board.

Below are the results, unedited from our download tablet. You will see that, for the goat races, I had to list each combination of fork decision as a separate course. You will need to combine these tables mentally in order to compare times and splits between race versions. Also, if you’re interested in competitors’ skip decision, you’ll have to look at which split time is exactly one minute –that will be the control that they skipped. I apologize for not combining and presenting these results in a more informative manner.

Finally, I have to acknowledge the incredible service performed by everyone who went back out after Sunday’s race to pick up some controls. Foremost among these volunteers was Lina, who after running the entire goat race, volunteered to go back out to the furthest controls, requiring an additional trek of approximately 8 km. Anyone who punches control #62, 63, or 64 in a future BOK meet needs to personally thank Lina after their race for bringing those flags back into the fold. Without Lina’s effort, those three controls would still be on the island, and might not come back until next year. Other incredibly helpful control gatherers include Jeff and Debra Rezeli, Cole Stillwell and Alleta Monts, Vladimir Stemkovski, Ben Hart, Sandro Gisler, Kevin Frankowski, Jonathan Kross, and Stephanie Ross, who organized these helpers.

Filed under: Event Results, Latest News by David Waller