Wow. I love this race. I wish I could have been ready for it. But I was not, am not. I ran this in 2005 with Mike. It was a blast. Passing people, nice trail, it was the next best thing to the Billy Pig.
Did you get a trophy shirt? What place? Sounds like single digits. Impressive! I barely did; #22. Unfortunately it was a heavy, long sleeve, polyester, LARGE. It fits me like a football jersey. Yet it is an article of clothing I will always be proud of. I will have it forever as testimony of my last successful training program; one I am kind of mimicking this year.
We went CCW in '05. I was left to believe that the direction alternates yearly, so by that reckoning you ran CW. Yes?
Mike created an Orienteering quality map of the course. He has the route highlighted in an pinkish ribbon. OCAD disagrees with Ronker's published distance. What the hey.
I'm surprised there were only 75 entrants. I hope this is not an indicator of a trend in running interest. Hopefully I am mistaken, but it seems the purest runners are being replaced by namby pamby neorunners.
Yeah. . .it was a very fun race, and it served its main purpose well: getting some of us ordinary blokes out in front, trying to defend a 'lead' near the end, instead of dragging-ass into the finish. But it's nowhere near as fun as a mass-start goat event (or any orienteerng event for that matter). It's really nice to hear that you have good experiences with this race; we'll have to get on it next year.
You have counted correctly, and they have been alternating correctly; the race went clockwise this year.
I noticed a Minium-special OCAD map of the course online; it's nice to know that they obtained it legally. Ronkers seemed pretty confident about the course having been measured officially, yet I would almost trust an OCAD estimate over his. I'm guessing that he ran a wheel over the course some time, but I wouldn't really trust it given the roots, stones, etc.
WRT entrants, this was the first year that they had two races: a 5.6 handicapped race and a 10.8 double-loop non-handicapped race. There were about 75 participants in each. So perhaps the event is still drawing a fair number of people; some of them (probably the faster ones) just aren't into the handicapping system.