Discussion: Blue Hills Traverse results

Congratulations to Will Hawkins, who won the Blue Hills Traverse today in 1:49:52, more than 10 minutes in front of the 2nd place finisher, Ross Smith (2:00:49). Pavlina Brautigam was third in 2:02:11, winning an exciting sprint from Samantha Saeger, who was 3 seconds behind.

Thanks Dean for an excellent course, and to all involved for a smoothly organized event. Hot soup takes most of the pain out of post-race recovery, and the long-sleeved shirt is again fine.

The route choice decisions seemed particularly prominent this year -- or is it just that I'm not prepared enough in that aspect.

I already said this to Dean in person, but I'd like to add here that I think this was the best Traverse course that I remember in avoiding the crap that plagues much of the area (particularly the East map). I thought it was excellent work. And I appreciate the properly-printed maps too, incidentally...

Gee thanks. A lot of the thanks should go to Jeff Saeger -- the suggestions he made after looking at earlier versions of the course, and especially after vetting the eventual control locations, made for a much better course (we made map corrections in the areas of #1, #3, #5, and #14, and I tossed 3 controls completely).

Oh - and oops -- there was a boulder on the map S of #1 that got overprinted by the control circle. Sorry for any confusion that might have caused.

I've posted the maps. And I'll second William's comments/praise.

Before you knew about the dog races, where was the "cultural object" going to be sited?

I'll echo what others said, I enjoyed this Traverse quite a bit, in spite of taking a stick to (near) the eye. The long sleeved T is very nice.

Thanks, Dean and Jeff.

I'm glad the stick missed your eye, Sam -- I guess your glasses helped there. PG - are you starting a club?

The cultural object was to be located at the N tip of the little triangular "field" about 100m W of the N end of Houghton's Pond.