Orienteering Event at The Morgan Arboretum

October 23, 2005

Our year-long luck with the weather finally ran out. Heavy rains for well over a week left a few parts of the Arboretum swamped. Fortunately, Sunday’s precipitation was light, but some sun would have been nice!

Wet conditions affect beginners the most, making concentration more of a problem and causing difficulties on courses that might otherwise be navigated with relative ease. Trails are generally harder to spot in the Fall when the leaves down, but they can be especially difficult to see when they are under water in places !

The Arboretum is our most popular location for Orienteering, and with good reason. It is also our most “challenging” area. An “intermediate level” course at another venue, for instance, can be a lot easier than at this site. (Perhaps we should offer a rating on the difficulty of our O-venues.)

One problem that should be easy to avoid is a “mis-punch” at a wrong control. There were several again on Sunday…a reminder to check the “control code” that is on each flag against the code printed in your “control description” sheet !!!

In spite of the conditions, there were a number of new families who participated and again a lot of young children were noticed. e.g.: Scott Bohle, with his wife Marian, completed Course 3 (except for one control) carrying his 11-months-old son, Maeve; and 5-years-old Joshua Berry walked all of Course One with his mother, Sondra.

There were 95 “Starts” with a total participation of 132, including 9 “accompanied” children under 12 years.

Francis Falardeau was an easy winner on the Long Advanced Course #4, completing the 8.8 km in just 68 minutes and 26 seconds, 34 seconds faster than my PFT (predicted fastest time) for the course. Francis Lambert and Donald Watson were 2^nd and 3^rd in 1:44:20 and 1:50:36 respectively.

On Course 3 (PFT: 58 minutes) Ariane Burke, led all of the men with a time of 1:06:30. Bruce Glen was 2^nd (1:14:42) and François Dufort was 3^rd (1:22:48).

Course 2 (PFT: 54 minutes) was run both clockwise and counter-clockwise, with the large body of John Abbott College students being sent on 2-B (clockwise). The fastest times were recorded by Orienteering “regulars”. Remarkably, 1^st, 3^rd and 4^th places were taken by youths 12 years and under (Ramblers Club members). Andrey Koptelov (12) did the 4.2 km “Intermediate” Course in 55½ minutes, Eric Rondeau (2^nd time Orienteering) was 2^nd in 1:13:20, Ryan Jones (10) was 3^rd (1:19:37) and mother Therese Jones with daughter Anna-Karin (9) was 4^th (1:22:17).

Jonathan Ruel and Sarah Jones of John Abbott had the fastest times on Course 2-B with times of 1:59 and 2:00 respectively. Ben Paradis of John Abbott was 3^rd in 2:27.

Courses 1 and 1-B (PFT: 44 minutes) had by far the most participants. Newcomers Michelle and Allison Gates completed the course in just over 39 minutes. 2^nd and 3^rd place finishers were close on their heels: Jason Cordery & Sonja Gates (0:40:10) and William Ludlow & Raeann Rose 0:41:50. Bruno Andraos of John Abbott, was the fastest student in 0:57:10 on the clockwise 1-B.

Our congratulations to all who came out and braved the weather ! John