Spooner Lake B-Meet

East Lake Tahoe
July 29, 2000

by Evan Custer, course setter

The first event of the Sierra 2000 O-Fest was a classic-distance B event at Lake Tahoe-Nevada State Park at Spooner Lake on Saturday, July 29, 2000. Spooner Lake was the site of last year's very successful US Championships, and most people were familiar with the area. GCO and BAOC jointly held the event, with BAOC providing the map, course setting, registration, and electronic punching, whereas GCO handled all of the other duties of the event, including the construction, start, finish, and parking chores.

The blue, red and green courses had a remote start, whereas the shorter courses started near the registration area. This limited course design in some respect, because the only reasonable route for the shorter courses was around Spooner Lake. For the longer courses, there is always a trade-off of trying to keep the amount of climb on the course to a reasonable amount versus having a very long and steep walk to the start. I made a compromise on these courses by having a moderately remote start to partially reduce the amount of climb, but because the terrain is so steep, I designed the courses to be relatively short length wise, but the distance turned out to be approximately correct time wise.

In M21 on the blue course, Andy Dale, a Brit doing post graduate study at Oregon State University and running for the Columbia River OC, started out in the lead and held it for the first nine controls. However, he then made a 6 minute error on 10 and a 10 minute error on control 11, and dropped down to 5th place. Meanwhile, Mikell Platt, winner of the US Championships last year and running for Rocky Mountain OC, ran a steady race, moved into first place and did not relinquish it until he crossed the finish line with a time of 1:15:21. Graeme Ackland, from England, started out in 2nd place, but had a 4 minute error on control 4 and dropped down to 5th. He stayed in 5th place for 5 legs until he had the fastest time on the 9th and 10th legs where he pulled into second and finished with a time of 1:23:41. Wyatt Riley and Syd Reader, both of BAOC, ran fairly similar races, but Wyatt pulled ahead near the end and squeaked past Syd by 17 seconds to earn 3rd place with a final time of 1:28:50.

Annabel Fernandez-Vallador from SDO won the F21 race on red. She started out fast, took the lead, and never relinquished it until she crossed the finish line with a time of 80:43. Jane Ackland finished second, and Sharon Crawford came in third.

There was a condensed class structure for the older categories. In M35 red, which encompassed all of the older men red runners from age 35 to 49, there was a close duel between Rick Breseman from Cascade OC and Jeff Saeger from the New England OC. Rick took a slight lead for the first two controls, but then Jeff moved into first place and held it until he made a 4 minute error on the penultimate control and dropped down to second place, 23 seconds behind Rick. Rick held onto his lead, and finished one second ahead of Jeff, with a final time of 77:20. Tim Good of Quantico came in third place with a time of 79:15, just 11 seconds ahead of Matthias Kohler from the BAOC.

In M50 green, which encompassed all of the older men runners from 50 to 64 on green, Gary Carpenter from BAOC took an early commanding lead, and never relinquished it, coming in with a time of 53:40. Rich Parker from San Diego, started out strong in 2nd place until he made a 13 minute error on control 5 and dropped down to 5th place. Chuck Spalding was in third place until that time, and he moved into second where he stayed with a final time of 61:35. Scott Donald came in third with a time of 73:15. Eileen Breseman won F35 easily with a time of 63:17, the third fastest time of everyone on the green course. Nik Weber came in 4th overall on the green course with a time of 65:29, and was first in M Green open.

On the brown course, Dennis Wildfogel came in first with a time of 41:07, winning the M Brown open. Heike Torgler won F Brown open and second overall on brown with a time of 49:15, and Carl Moore came in first in M65 with a time of 54:38, 4th overall on brown. Linda Moore won F60 with a time of 64:58. There was an exciting race for F12 on white between Rachel Care from BAOC and Jutta Torgler. They ran neck and neck for most of the race with Jutta slightly ahead. However, she then made a one minute error on the penultimate control, and Rachel pulled ahead finishing with a time of 28:21, just 13 seconds ahead of Jutta.

This was the first use of the SportIdent electronic punching in a major event in the US. There was a slight problem at the beginning because we opened the wrong data base for the client computer which was used to enter the day of event entries. It wasn't until after several people finished but could not be found in the entry list that the error was discovered and corrected. After that, the system performed excellently and was very well received by the competitors. Fortunately, Peter Hedberg, the Swedish representative from SportIdent, was here during the O-Fest, and solved all of the problems we ran up against.