Coconino College Sprints/Motala

Sat, Jul 22, 2023

GPHXO held a Sprints/Motala event at Coconino Community College in Flagstaff, AZ on Saturday July 22, 2023. We offered three individual sprint courses as well as a Motala - all three sprints put together into a single endurance event. It was another beautiful day, but temperatures quickly became hot. That may be why we had a small turnout.

We had one person run the Motala (Jeff Rockow). His time (just under 2 hours) was good, especially considering the heat and the distance/climb of the Motala: 7.6km/290m. That's about 10.5km/6.5 miles equivalent distance, so Jeff had a rate of over 5kmh/3mph while navigating. Very good. Jeff says next time he might use a compass. If anyone has a good deal on a thumb compass, please let Jeff know.

We had two teams attend the events. Team Kool (Gavin and Katie) were in town from Tucson. Team Marky-Marc (Mark and Marc) came all the way from their homes in Flagstaff. Each team completed two sprints each, in good times.

We had 2 first-time orienteers attend. Welcome to Callie Hatch and her son Hunter! After a quick training session they went out on Sprint #1 with Olga Baykova helping them. They completed the course very nicely. Hunter seems to be a natural at this sport. Olga covered Sprint 1 easily and intended to do another course, but her dog Lily decided to sit under the timing table for a while, and then she went with Callie and Hunter for part of their course. Thanks for doing that, Olga, and thanks for the snacks!

Our thanks to Jeff Rockow for helping pick up controls, and to Ron and Erik who secured permission, permits, insurance, etc as usual.