Billygoat at Mt. Tom, thanks to Phil Bricker, head goat for this 32nd edition of the BG. The course seemed great to me. Not just a longish Blue course. Back to how Billygoats were early on, a mix of hard and not so hard orienteering, definitely less technical than many advanced courses that we normally have. And also a chance to visit parts of the map that most folks haven't seen. I think I even went a couple places I hadn't seen, around #s 3 and 4. And there certainly was a lot of climb. But then, it is the Billygoat.
And my run? The verdict is in and it only takes one word -- fabulous. :-)
No, seriously, it was better than I had any reason to expect. Virtually no mistakes. Tired, of course, but not as bad as I anticipated (we did have 800m of drop). And a placing high enough that, well, if Joe Brautigam, next year's head goat, designs a course with a reasonable number of controls, one of them near the end may have PG on it. (There was a PG control today, though that was a salute to Peter Grollman.)
Nice win by Boris, nipping Ross by 5 seconds as they took different forks right at the end, first win by Boris after several runner-ups, though disappointing I'm sure for Ross. Samantha led the women again, with an out-of-retirement Hilary close behind. Big Eddie was first old men, Tracy Olafsen frst of the old ladies, Carl Underwood and Meg Parson first juniors, Luke Lyons the youngest ever BG finisher at age 8, one of 6 members of the Lyons family to finish the course.
Thanks again to Phil. It's a good bit of work putting this on, and then you have to hope that no controls get taken and no one gets badly hurt, so it's a stressful weekend. But he did an A+ job.
The
course.
My
routes. Skipped #15 (had been thinking of skipping 7, but decided 15 was a better choice), took the right fork at the end.