Thorpe Park (Flagstaff)
Score-O, Adventure Race
Saturday, June 10, 2023

It's always nice when summer comes and we're able to offer events in Flagstaff. We were once again treated to pleasant weather and beautiful scenery at this year's events at Thorpe Park. We had a nice showing with 14 participants at our navigation exercises. The park fills up with families and kids later in the day, but our 8:00 AM start time beats most of the crowd.

We had six participants join us for the adventure race. We started with a 2.0 km trek, to spread teams out a little. We followed with an 18.5 km bike and finally a 7.4 km Score-O course. None of the controls were mandatory, so teams were allowed to visit all or none of the controls on each segment of the race. The only rule was that the events had to be completed in order (trek-bike-Score-O), and once a team transitioned to the next event, they were not allowed to return to get controls from the previous event.

Team Swingin' Richards (Alex Madden, Ben Price) had a great showing and visited all controls on all courses in under the 5-hour limit. Team True North (Greg Krasa, Karen Jelenick) and Jeff Rockow successfully visited all the bike controls and went out on foot on the Score-O afterwards. Mike Brunner and Jeff Rockow both visited half of the 20 Score-O locations.

Kevin Adams, our course setter for the Bike-O, was unable to make it to the Thorpe Park events. He hung the bike controls earlier in the week and will collect the controls later next week. Make sure you thank Kevin for an excellent course the next time you see him.

We also had eight participants do the Score-O separately from the adventure race. No one cleared the course, but Steve Trautwein collected 18 of the 20 controls in just over 2 hours. Unfortunately, he returned to the finish ten seconds over time, so we had to deduct a point from his score (sorry Steve). The rest of the teams each visited 11 controls. Team Cram Jam (Jason Cram, Jessi Cram) intentionally stayed on the course over time to visit an extra two controls. The Leftovers (James Yih, Marc Schlaud, Daniel Amante) timed their course perfectly and returned to the finish with less than two minutes to spare. Finally, T.J. and Maggie Kuhn showed the biggest effort as they sprinted to reach the finish (unfortunately) just over the time limit.

Thanks to everyone who joined us at our Thorpe Park events. We enjoy presenting navigation courses so we all get to explore new places in Arizona. And special thanks to all of you who helped pick up contols after the adventure race. With your help, we were able to collect all the Score-O controls before we left for the day. Presenting our navigation events is unfortunately quite time consuming. We truly appreciate your help picking up controls even after completing a 5-hour event.