Great Brook seems to have evolved into one of our most popular meet sites - deservedly so, with varied terrain, good parking and hang-out area, friendly park staff, and a pretty up-to-date map (more on that below). We had an excellent turnout for the National Orienteering Day meet on September 16; there was a nearly constant line at registration and at the start, and it was tough to keep track of finishers at the peak.

The Great Brook map extends quite far to the south, in a corridor west of Tophet Swamp, but this area has rarely been used for meets because it would be a dogleg. However, the recent addition of a trail and boardwalk has made a narrow loop there possible, so I incorporated that into the Red course, also sending competitors onto a large island in the swamp. The island is rarely visited by people, but thanks to the dry summer it was pretty accessible, and added an air of adventure to the course. One downside to using this lightly-vetted part of the map (later in the course) was that one possible route choice to #15 crossed some unmapped features, including a stone wall, which I'll confess I never saw because I never went that way in field-checking or course-setting. This threw off maybe half the people on Red, to whom I sincerely apologize.

This was the second NEOC meet where e-punching was used (just on the advanced courses) and, despite a hiccup or two, that went well. E-punch leg splits are always fun to peruse, telling small stories of triumph or disaster within the overall race; the Green and Red splits are attached to this article, and, though unwieldy, I hope they make it into the newsletter or onto the Web site. From these, you can see the problems with Control 15 (#115) on Red, while the same control caused no problems for Green, coming from another direction. Most of the legs on these two courses were the same, except for the Red's southern loop. Ian Finlayson, on Green, and John Frederickson, on Red, turned in the fastest runs of the day.

There are many people to thank for this meet's success. Before the meet, Bob Dangel spent the better part of a Sunday morning inputting map changes into OCAD, and Joanne Sankus delivered e-punch equipment to my house and trained us in its use. Joanne, as usual, also did a huge amount of work at the meet and afterwards. Annette Leonard-Zupan, Pete Lane, Caroline and Ceire Fleming, and Jason Tong greeted people at registration and instructed newcomers. Starts and finish were ably staffed by a contingent of Carlisle residents: Robert and Janice Galejs, Bill Pullman, and Meg Parson. (Janice deserves special praise for handling the start with aplomb for over 3 hours.) Jim Paschetto helped with control pickup, waiting patiently til the courses were clear. Finally, my biggest helpers were Ben and Meg Parson. Ben was my "tech director", handling various OCAD and e-punch tasks; he also picked up many controls, posted results and filled water jugs. Meg, as mentioned, worked a very busy finish; she also set up the String-O with Ceire, then picked up controls (including the island one, as night was falling), and typed all the results, including the split times. Again, thank you, everyone!

You can also see the red and green split times.