We wrapped-up our fifth annual Fox Chase at Carolina North Forest on Sunday. For the first time, we ran the race from the school side of the park, and the Fox walked a much more circuitous and narrow route than in years past. This new twist favored thoughful navigation even more than usual, as runners not only had to find their controls, but had to estimate their timing and the Fox’s timing especially accurately. The new venue also enabled us to get into some very tricky areas in the south, which tied-up some runners longer than they would have liked.

Vladimir Stemkovski emerged victorious with an impressive 271 points, just shy of the all time point record of 287 by Matthew Kirk, who finished behind Vladimir and Matthew Craig this year.

Another new twist this year was an optional course dubbed ‘pairs’ in which runners could visit two controls before checking back in with the Fox. The catch was that each control on this course was only worth half as many points as on the regular course. I realized after posting these rules that a 2:1 ratio of points between the classic and pairs courses imposed too severe of a penaly on the pairs runners. If we do this format again in the future, we’ll probably have a different divisor.

Perhaps the most impressive performance of the day came from the pairs course winner, Eddie, who, despite the very harsh penalty, was still able to score 215 points.

Visit our LiveLox page here to visualize the results. And if you participated and have your route saved, feel free to add it to the event. Also, be sure to check out Matt Kirk’s blog post about this event.

Huge thanks to Kevin Frankowski, Matt Kirk, McConnell, Tatyana Stemkovski, Lina Lindberg, and Brian Pike for help with control pickup. With so many helpers, each needed only to gather a few and we were out of the park by 1:00. Great job guys! Results follow (sorry they’re ugly; I’m struggling with the html and WordPress today).

Filed under: Event Results, Latest News by David Waller