The weather forecast calls for cloudy skies with occasional rain
showers. Assuming the showers stay on the light side, the condition
for our Calero event this Sunday should be great. Any light rain we
get will certainly help with footing on those hillsides. In the
unlikely event of heavy rain, be sure to check your e-mail or the
hotline for last minute updates.

Here are the combined Event Director's and Course Setter's notes.

See you at Calero on Sunday,
Tapio

------------------------

Calero Reservoir, Morgan Hill                Sunday, November 9, 2003

Event Director's Notes

Welcome to the Bay Area Orienteering Club's annual event at beautiful
Calero Park. At this year's event, in addition to the regular beginner
and intermediate courses, we will be using the "compressed chase"
format for some of the advanced courses.

In addition to the regular beginner (White, Yellow) and intermediate
(Orange) courses, a Short Orange will be offered. The Brown and Green
courses will be shorter than usual, since they will also be used as
the preliminary and final courses of the compressed chase. So, if you
are a regular Brown runner, you might consider moving up to Green. If
you are a regular Green runner, we hope that you consider taking part
in the chase as the courses have been shortened to make the chase
feasible also for Green runners as well as for Red and Blue runners.

Course     Distance  Climb  Navigation     Terrain

White      3.4 km    195 m  Beginner       Trails
Yellow     3.1 km    210 m  Adv. Beginner  Mostly Trails
Shrt Orng  2.4 km    210 m  Intermediate   Off-trail, Moderate
Orange     3.2 km    240 m  Intermediate   Off-trail, Hard
Brown      2.1 km    195 m  Advanced       Off-trail, Moderate
Green      3.3 km    285 m  Advanced       Off-trail, Hard

The registration and beginner's clinics will be in parking area near
the main office. There will be a remote start/finish area for all the
courses. To reach the start, proceed through the gate across the
driveway from the registration area and follow the streamers along the
trail for approximately 1.5 km. Allow 25 minutes to reach the start.
All participants are encouraged to bring a picnic lunch with them to
the start/finish area and stay and enjoy the chase, which will contain
spectator legs.

Both Orange courses and all the advanced course use electronic
punching, so don't forget your e-sticks. You can rent an e-stick at
the registration, if you don't own one.

Regular course participants should expect the usual schedule for local
events, i.e., starts from 10:00am - 12:30pm, with the exception that
we will need to close the regular Green course starts earlier than
usual at 11:45am to prepare for the chase. We'll reopen them briefly
after the chase starts to accommodate any late arrivals.

If you are planning to run in the compressed chase, arrive early
enough to allow time to get to the remote start/finish area, run the
Brown course, and allow any rest time you'd like before the start of
the final of the compressed chase, which we will be starting as close
to 12:00 noon as possible. Even the strongest runners should plan to
start the Brown course no later than 11:15, and note that you may have
to wait for a start time as almost all the advanced runners will be
running the Brown course.

New map

A large part the Calero map has just been remapped by Zoron
Krivokapic. All the courses will venture into the newly mapped parts
of the map. The maps are printed at a 1:10,000 scale with 25-foot
(~7.5 m) contour intervals. Clue sheets are printed on the front of
the maps.

On the newly mapped areas the mapper is using a non-standard "green T"
symbol to mark fallen trees. The symbol is oriented to point the
direction of the fallen tree trunk. Note that the "green T" symbol is
fixed size, thus it only indicates the direction of the trunk, not its
length.

On the older parts of the map a fallen tree showing roots in the air
is mapped as a "brown X", and coded as a rootstock (circled X) on the
clue sheet. A fallen tree without visible roots or a standing dead
tree is mapped as a "green X", and coded as a lone tree modified by
the ruined symbol (bent arrow) on the clue sheet.

The current water level in the reservoir is quite a bit lower than
indicated on the map. This may affect your route choices, especially
on the Orange course.

Things to keep in mind

All courses close at 2 p.m. You must report to the finish before that
time whether or not you have completed your course. If you do not
report to the finish, we must assume that you may be lost or injured,
and therefore a search party may be formed. Please be sure to write
your license plate number on the registration form.

Every participant on every course must carry a whistle. Whistles will
be available at registration for participants who do not have one. If
you become hopelessly lost or injured, blow three short tones at
approximately one minute intervals until help arrives. The whistles
are not toys and should be used only in an emergency.

The park has quite a few patches of poison oak. The courses are
designed to avoid the worst of it, but necessary precautions (Tecnu,
etc.) are recommended. Also, check for ticks after your run.

The park is heavily used by equestrians. Please be courteous and give
them the right of way by slowing to a walk and moving to the side of
the trail to let them pass.

Compressed Chase

For the Red and Blue runners, and perhaps also for strong Green
runners, a "compressed chase" format will be used. The format is
designed to generate a closely contested chase event, even with the
number of competitors typical of a local event. The idea of a
compressed chase is that a short preliminary course is used to seed
the competitors, and then the competitors start a second course on
30-second intervals, based on their rank on the first course. So, even
if the competitors spread out during the preliminary seeding course,
their starts are "compressed" together for the second chase course,
virtually guaranteeing competitors chance to run closely with other
competitors.

While we want to encourage head-to-head competition, and hope that
"trains" will form, we don't want the chase to turn into a
just-follow-the-train race. So to mix things up a bit more we have
added a special butterfly pattern of controls somewhere along the
chase course. Butterfly patterns have recently become popular in the
larger European events and have also been used in the recent WOCs,
where the objective is to break up any following that might develop on
the course.

Butterfly is a group of controls forming 2 loops with a common start
and end control in the middle. The 2 loops resemble the wings of a
butterfly, thus the name butterfly loops. Both loops are roughly but
not necessarily precisely the same length and each will take 5-10
minutes to complete. All the competitors will complete both loops but
the order will vary; half the competitors will run the right-most loop
first while the other half starts with the left-most loop. Thus, for
half the competitors the pattern looks like (an example, not from the
actual course)

while the other half sees it as

Note that each competitor has to punch the common control 3 times:
first when you enter the butterfly, then a second time when you have
completed the first loop, and finally for the 3rd time when you have
completed the 2nd loop.

The common control will be marked with 3 numbers stacked up on your
map, it will be duplicated 3 times on your control description sheet,
and it will be programmed in the e-punch scoring to require 3
punches. We expect that this will be easy to forget, since it will
seem like once you've found the bag you shouldn't need to visit it
again, but because the two wings are of slightly different length, the
multiple punching is a necessary requirement to balance the two
variants of the course. So please remember to punch the common control
3 times.

Directions

From the Peninsula, take Highway 85 south to Almaden Expressway. Head
south 5 miles to the end of the road. Turn right onto Harry, and then
immediately left onto McKean. The main park entrance is 5 miles south
on McKean. Go past the boat ramp and turn right at the entrance marked
"Calero County Park; Park Office; Equestrian Center; All Trailheads."

From the East Bay, take Highway 101 south past San Jose and exit at
Bernal Road west. Immediately turn south onto Monterey Highway (bear
right, then make a left turn). Go south 3.4 miles and turn right at
the traffic light onto Bailey Avenue. After 2.9 miles west, Bailey
ends at McKean; turn left and go south 0.7 miles to the park entrance.

Hope you enjoy the courses!

Your event organizers,

Dan Greene
Tapio Karras