Discussion: Hudson Highlander

Here are preliminary results, those who finished in 6:30 or less (time limit is 8 hours).

Tough course, warm day. I'll post maps shortly, but first dinner, maybe some beer, maybe some ice cream.... :-)

Where you flying home? You posted the result while we were still waiting for the late comers, cleaning and pickung up controls.(Correction: actually you were not flying, this was PST time. Was I tired yesterday?) Thanks!

And here are the official results:
http://hvo.us.orienteering.org/content/Highlander/...

So the beer was good, the ice cream was good, but the home-made pizza by Gail was exceptional (tomatoes, onions, red peppers, spinach, goat cheese, probably a secret ingredient or two).

Here is Highlander map 1. By the way, this is the southern part of the terrain used for the classic race at WOC93.

And Highlander map 2, the trail run, on map used for the WOC93 relay.

And Highlander map 3, on map used for the WOC93 short final.

And Highlander map 4, eastern part was used for the last part of the WOC93 classic.

Thanks for posting maps.
What an awesome area to orienteer!


>maybe some ice cream.... :-)
PG, mint chocolate chip still the preferred flavour?

Was #16 a control in the men's WOC final?

mint chocolate chip still the preferred flavour?

I seem to have gotten some combination of coffee and chocolate. No complaints.

Ice cream? Great idea. Got to try the Brownie mud pie special in my freezer. I have not eaten much since the race ended. But I drank a lot fluids and I took an ice cold shower at home. Walking improved after that.

I wonder if anyone else took the wide looping trail south of the line, along the swamp and up between #1 and #2. It was almost 1 k more running, but good trails and what I believe easier on the legs. Yet when I did it, I was all on my own and thought, maybe courage to do my own thing is actually foolishness. Maybe I would lose so much time that everyone would scream by me. Which was not the case.

I have seen several people doing the large reentrant to trail and across the plains. A bunch of people went on the trail north of the line and cut through from there.

The two long legs spread out the field for the rest of the race. There were very few groups forming. I met other runners, some went ahead but I caught them by reading the map more carefully.

Hammer- good memory, but not perfect, and this tested my filing system. Men's A final #7 was in fact inside this circle, but was on the boulder SW from this #16 cliff, just above the index contour, code #257, 1.0/1.8, south side.

Excellent! Checked off the boulder on the way in. Polebrook is my favorite map.

piutepro, that is the way I was going to go when test-running, but I thought I'd try straight (through the burnt area) just for the fun of it (that is, in a race I would have gone left along the wide trails, cut across near Hogencamp Mine, then up the foot trail to just beyond the control and back in from the bend next to the control). It is very slow through the thigh-deep ferns and bracken up the hill there, and not much better along the top, while the right-hand foot trails are bendy and rocky, so I would be surprised if left wasn't fastest. In fact, I thought it was so obvious I suggested that you move the control; guess I was wrong.

There seems to be some ways to sneak through the bracken and fern areas. Still, uphill and off trail costs a lot of strength. See Ross: He won the King of the Mountain only to crash on the next short leg.

And yes, now it can be revealed foot was the test runner on loop 1 two weeks before the Highlander. He gave Paul Bennett some notes. I believe he adjusted some of the course after your run. Thanks Will!

My intent was to take the left trail, which I thought was the obvious choice, so I followed the other people I thought were doing it. I don't know where I missed the fork (in fact, I saw a trail leading off to the right that I thought was it, but I guess not). It was only because I was running behind Charlie when he left the trail to the left that I figured out my mistake.

I went straight across the plain whereas Charlie kept on going south on the trail to the east of it. After fighting the ferns & bracken I emerged just SE of the control and ahead of Charlie who was coming up just behind me.

This got me ahead of a lot of people who are faster than me, but I gave it all back on #3 when I got my stream crossings mixed up...

Here is the complete set of results. Thanks everyone for coming and fighting over the hills, through the swamps and ignoring the green monsters along the way. And in between there was some good old fast running.

Overall results

Short splits

Extended Splits

Re: #16 Thanks Eric, going west from the Men's A final #7 is a very nice area. Heck the whole map is nice. Well the whole park is nice really. :)

Re: overall results --
Susie DeWitt is M? :-) (HH-M)

Because Rick DeWitt is HH-Fdns.

Susie used Rick's e-punch.

Well, it was my e-punch. I either switched the numbers around or they entered them wrong.

:-)

Well, I know for sure it was Susie who was one of the folks I led astray on the way to #1.

You could tell by her e-punch?

Are you leading people astray again on the #1 control? I thought you used up your quota long ago on one of those goat type races.

My favorite was the Billygoat at Moneyhole. I lead a sizable group off in the general direction and perhaps halfway there I found myself on a rocky outcrop surrounded by swamp on all sides except for the way we had come. I stopped, turned around, and said, quite truthfully, "I don't know where the fuck I am."

And then took off into the swamp, followed by no one.

One of those magical moments....

And I was stupid enough to be following Peter in both instances.
At least at the Billygoat I (along with Jim Baker) was able to figure out right away where we were. My recollection is that Jim & I led the pack out of the cul-de-sac, and we didn't go through the swamp.
I'm sure Peter still beat us all (just like he did this year at the HH).

I have no clue what might be wrong with the results. When I go there, Susie is HH-F and Rick is HH-Mdns (kidding, I switched the highly confusing details).

I was never quite sure if you had led us in there accidentally or not, Peter.

It was, indeed, a hilarious moment. Great fun.

(I quickly lost that pack-leading status by missing the obvious early skip.)

Was that the Billygoat where Greg B made his debut in the USA? I recall in the write-up, there was talk of a "mad Russian" who took off really fast out of the start only to finish the course bloodied and in the middle-rear of the pack.

I don't remember what it said in the writeup, but that year (1993) was indeed Balter's first Goat, and he finished in 21st place in 2:11:33, two places and 90 seconds behind some character named Breton.

I didn't know where I was on that first leg either, nor the second, because I was following Eric Weyman, who went on to win the race, and we were going way too fast for me to read my map. I looked at it for quite a while afterwards, but couldn't for the life of me figure out where we had gone. I had to stop following him after about five controls, because I was apparently giving 100% effort.

I remember Greg in this event: late in the race, I saw this guy I didn't recognize near me, and he was wandering a bit. I wondered who he was and why he was so close (place-wise) to me. (I was better then, at least in my memory.) I'd love to be close to Balter (again, place-wise!) these days.

If the results are still open to correction... I think Sam should get credited with 4th place all by herself (or at least be noted here...) After just over 4 hours into the race, just jogging down that road was pretty painful - and she managed to win a 4-way sprint finish...

Thanks for the recognition :) I wouldn't have even made it that far if it wasn't for Hill helping me out along the way. Next year though, I think I'll petition for photo finshing, because I totally got to the SI unit first :)

I saw your finish from 100 meters away, so my photofinish eye was not close enough. I heard that Sam was first in the punch, but Jordan was right within the same second. I guess the software lists ties alphabetically

Maybe the SI units have 1/10 of a second data somewhere, so we could check this.

I moved Sam up to first forth place. ---

I was surprised how Sam and Hilly were able to hit the box in sync at the trail run twice. Did you practice this at home?

I received a thank-you note/e-mail from Ross yesterday for keeping the Highlander going. To see my work (and of course the work of all my Highlander friends) appreciated makes it worth to get keep this thing going. Thank you for the thank you!

Next year's planned date is October 5, 2008. This is one week after the NA (and maybe the US champs, too?), so people can stay in the area if they want to.

Hill and I didn't plan it - I actually tried to sprint away from her at the end of the trail section, but was unsuccessful :)

I want to add my thanks, to Daniel AND Paul, who I think did a lot of the course setting.
And I know this has a lot of other HVO ers (and Donna was excellent on the grille) helping out, thanks to you all.
Next "goat", Blue Hills Traverse, December 2nd.

I really appreciate the hard work involved in setting up this event --
Thanks Daniel, Paul, and crew for an excellently run event. That on top of a great Surebridge meet in the spring...

The Traverse is pending permission which I don't anticipate an issue with, and it will be placed on the Attackpoint calendar as soon as it's clear it's gonna happen.

Just to give you a taste -- E-punching will probably make its inaugural appearance at the Traverse, and Ross has hinted that he might be able to organize some sprints the day before...

You guys are all stark raving mad...

The Traverse goes on.
Permissions? We dont need no stinking permissions!

What is he saying?!!! WMI
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stinking_badges

This was a race not to miss. Do we already know the next years date?

The Highlander 2008 is planned for October 5, 2008. - As for the permission, I got the paperwork completed about a week before the race. The ranger first felt we don't need a permission, he was new at this office. While I didn't want to teach him his job, I still brought him the insurance certificate and finally he figured how to print the permit and get some cash from me.

Mmh, this is the same date as the WC Sprint race in Zurich.

I guess we have to raise the price money for the Highlander. Say we double it, or triple it. (No problem, one of the numbers is 0...)

I vote that Daniel be put in charge of getting all permits for Harriman events.
How about securing us one of those cabins on Baileytown as a club house while you are at it.

This might deserve a seperate thread, but the news of this cabin/ camp availability also made waves to DVOA land. If the scope is expanded beyond the HVO and DVOA clubs to incluse US Team or USOF interests, might this be more than just a fantasy?

I stayed in one cabin at the ETA camp last spring. ETA is in the center of the Baileytown map, the access is from Rte. 6. To get to the center of Harriman one has to drive down to Queensboro Circle and up along Seven Lake Drive. The cabins are, to say the least, very rustic. The typical kind of banged up thin walled Catskill summer cabins. After spending two nights there I doubt that it makes sense to get a cabin unless someone is willing to put serious money in it.

I have used these cabins as well. They are rustic indeed. But no worse than the cabins I have seen used by groups in Europe. They would require some fixing but I don't think "serious money" is the right scope. Fresh stain, some plumbing work, some wood work. Nothing that we as a group could not handle financially and technically.
I personally would be prepared to devote time and resources to getting a cabin on the baileytown map - next to lake - that the O community could use as a club house for training in Harriman and its surroundings.
Time for a new thread.

There are cabins available? What? Sounds pretty great. What's the deal?

Continued in new thread...
"Club House for Orienteers in Harriman State Park"