2025 Reed's Crossing Score-O

Although the Reed's Crossing score-O event was attended by just 18 participants, it was very successful and everyone seems to have had a great time. The 60-minute time limit seems to have been well set for elite runners, but many other participants said that they would have liked to have had a 90- or 120-minute option because they were having a lot of fun and wanted to try to find all the controls. Usually, we offer the longest course timed for the elite runners but it makes sense to offer courses with longer time limits for slower participants wanting to spend more time on the course.

The use of the MapRun app was very successful with a 10-meter sensitivity at each control site. Two participants had problems getting credit at four control sites but we used their tracks to confirm that they found those sites. Otherwise, participant satisfaction with MapRun was very high because it was fast and easy to use with a quick reporting of results. The only other problem was that MapRun took 30 points off scores per minute that participants returned late instead of the 20 points that we mentioned in the pre-event briefing, so we corrected the results with just 20-point penalties per minute for late arrivals to the finish.

This event included our first Kidd-O course (a short "white" course), which was enthusiastically received by our youngest participants, who did the course repeatedly in different ways after doing the main course with their parents. We will continue to offer these courses at our future events.

We were delighted to share our sport with a local park user, Aditya Bhutan, who was curious about our sport. He and his daughter downloaded the MapRun app and did the course at the end of our event. We hope to see the two of them at future events.

Thanks go to the Boyle family for control pickup of the entire Kidd-O course, Kathleen Kerns for registration, photos, and baking for the post-event social, and Tony Pinkham for the map and course setting.