BOK's annual fox chase happened this Sunday. It's a fast-paced 90-minute "score-o" that involves chasing down the "fox" AKA event director between each control. Route planning and timing are extra challenging. It's one of my favorites. 2024 marked my fourth time participating.
I won it the previous two years. 2022 was my best performance with a score of 287 out of 320 points visiting 16 out of 28 controls. In 2023, I suffered an early navigational blunder and lost substantial time finishing with a score of 282 out of 412 points visiting 14 out of 24 controls.
My 2024 goal was to break 300 points, but I knew that the fox always has some tricks up his sleeve. Last year involved the fox reversing direction midway. This year's event announcement alluded to a new course on the "west side" of the Carolina North Forest. The Pumpkin Loop was out.
 |
| Carolina North Forest 2019-2023 fox route: orange "Pumpkin Loop" 2024 guess: red/green Duke/OWASA corridor |
This new course was a mystery, but based on the coordinates provided for the meeting area (Seawell Elementary), I took a stab at what loop the fox might be following, measured out some splits and drew them on a sheet protector at 1:7500 scale. There was a good chance I was wrong.
In case I was right, this step would save me about 20 minutes of critical route planning on the day of the event, which I could then use to figure out how I might break 300 points. Based on average point value of controls over the years (14.8), I figured I'd need to visit about 20.
If this figure was correct, I would have to bounce back and forth between each control and the fox on average about every 4.5 minutes. Looking back over 13 hours of track data, a reasonable estimate for distance I could cover in that time stood at about 500 meters.
So about 10 km in 90 minutes. Piece of cake, right? I already knew better and braced for humiliation. What ensued was a series of mistakes starting at map pick-up. First, I realized I was completely wrong with my guess: the fox would be following a less obvious path.
There were also fewer controls than previous years and some were worth quite a lot such as control 41: 59 points! I fumbled with a new strategy in the countdown before the start. I'd try and get the 8 highest scoring controls for 310 points: 37, 39, 41, 42, 45, 47, 53 and 54.
We were told that the fox would be traveling clockwise for each loop. So I visited 47 first and got back to the fox in about 8 minutes. So far so good. Things went south as I got turned around in the thick green looking for 41. I attacked it a couple times and left empty-handed.
I settled on visiting control 42 instead, which was worth 49 points returning to the fox after a whopping 27 minutes. In the heat of this moment, I decided to lick my wounds and visit a lower scoring control 33 (12 points) before warily setting off again to the nether regions.
Control 53 (37 points) was much kinder to me. I made it back to the fox in about 8 minutes shortly after the start of the final loop. Now what? How about another quick control 46 (15 points)? Back in 4 minutes. Good. Let's go bigger: control 45 (39 points). 13 minutes, ouch.
I decided on another quick control 38 (11 points) in about 5 minutes. Still point hungry, I went west for 54 (35 points) returning to the fox in 14 minutes after multiple attacks in the thick vegetation. Less than 10 minutes left so went for easy picking: 36 and 52 (15 and 10 points).
When the dust settled, I had visited 10 controls: 47, 42, 33, 53, 46, 45, 38, 54, 36 and 52 for a score of 255 points, well off my goal of 300 and definitely not close to first place. That honor belongs to Vladimir, who's blog is an inspiration for this entry. Congrats to him.
Thanks to Dave for another awesome event. As always, I'm grateful to have gotten out (and back unharmed). I look forward to trying again... and improving! Livelox playback here.
Comments