CSU/NEOC Spring Park-O Series - Boston Common, Boston, MA
April 20, 2023
Event Director: Pia Webb
Course Setter: Nils Peters
The Spring Park Orienteering Thursday series started on a high note on Boston Common, and SPOT #2 is coming soon: Thursday April 27th 6-7pm at Nahanton Park in Newton
Event write-up from our Boston Common mapper and course setter Nils:
The first sprint of the SPOT series is in the books and, and unbenownst to us there were other events planned for Boston Common on 4/20. We demonstrated that orienteering really is living the high life. High here of course refers to the number of participants (more than 50), but also the hundreds of spectators chilling out after their own 4:20pm event. To be blunt: we were a little bit overwhelmed when we saw the Monument Hill in a haze. But in a joint decision we decided to keep rolling, and it all went smoothly. After the race, interested runners had the option to do some extra maze training, with the main objection being to stay off the grass. Overall, a pretty dope sprint, and I hope you had as much fun running as we had organizing it.
Results from Boston Common (if you didn’t use the QR code on your result splits) are available online.
Notes from the event: Boston Common was a fast and open park area, the rest of the series will be more wooded and provide more navigational challenges. While everyone did an excellent job avoiding the late addition of out-of-bounds around the new MLK memorial monument, there were several of us who chose routes through the olive green sections of the map. For those of you less familiar with the olive green color on sprint maps, this designates out-of-bounds areas in the same way as purple hatch lines. This was not an issue with our location in Boston, but going through olive green can impact future access in map locations with more sensitive landowners, and avoiding the olive green also can add to the route choice challenges.
