Advanced courses (brown, green, and red) work differently from usual. Those runners should make sure to read the notes below carefully.

Before I explain that, first, note that the easier courses (white, yellow, and orange) take the usual format. The orange course in particular takes a very snaky route around the area, with many rapid changes of direction. Make sure to keep yourself oriented, and remember that you have to visit the controls in the order the course indicates. On the white course, I have used orange flagging tape to help you navigate one leg where there is no trail: make sure to follow the orange flagging tape all the way to the following control. Runners on other courses (including yellow) may encounter this marked route, but it is not shown on your maps so you will not know where it goes and should be careful if you follow it!

Advanced courses (brown, green, and red) will work differently at this meet from usual. There are four shorter loops, which I have creatively named L1, L2, L3, and L4. You are welcome to do as many or as few of these loops as you like - they stand alone as independent courses. L1, L2, and L3 are each around 2.5km in length, while L4 is shorter, around 1.0km.

After doing a loop, you can take a break, refuel, and compare notes with other orienteers about how you did, for as long as you like - you are not on the clock in between courses. You can also do the loops in any order that you feel like. However, please make sure to download your SI e-punch finger stick after each loop, and then reclear it before going out on a second, third, or fourth loop.

This is a club series meet, so when you register for the meet at the beginning of the day, if you are interested in competing in the club series or comparing your results with others, you should select your intended course, brown, green, or red. (You can only sign up for one of the three.) If you sign up for red, then you have to do loops L1, L2, and L3. Your time for red is just the sum of your times for L1, L2, and L3 (which you can do in any order, and you can also do L4 as well if you feel like it - it just won't be counted as part of your result on 'red'). If you sign up for green, then you have to do loops L1 and L2. Your time for green is just the sum of your times on these two loops, which you can again do in either order. For brown, you must do loops L3 and L4.

Club series scoring for advanced courses is based on the combined time for the required two or three loops. That is, to get a score for a red course, we will look at all the people who sign up for red, and calculate their median time for the L1+L2+L3 combination. Similarly for green and brown. To make sure we get the right groups for scoring purposes, if you do more than the basic set of loops required for your course (for example, suppose you choose to run green, so you do L1 and L2, but then you decide at the end of the day that it was so much fun that you want to go out on L3 as well for fun), make sure that the results staff know which 'color' you want to be entered for (in the example, if you don't say anything we might assume you want a result for red rather than green, since doing L1. L2, and L3 qualifies you for a result in either green or red, whichever you prefer).

The terrain in this area of Mendon is glaciated and complex, full of random depressions, knolls, ridges, and reentrants. The map shows quite a lot of green 'difficult to run' vegetated areas; however, at this season of the year, these are not as bad as they look, and you can probably think of most of the green as 'one level less severe' than the map shows it. The boundaries of the green are no longer particularly accurate; it is much safer to use other features for navigation. Some clearings are now mostly overgrown. The 'white woods' are really nice to run through.

A few of the smaller trails are becoming less distinct over time, particularly early in the spring. Do not rely too much on the indistinct trails.

Water features are extremely wet, after the record April rainfall followed by more rain in the week preceding the meet. You shouldn't need to get wet feet, but you may find a couple of depressions filled with more water than you are expecting. (This applies particularly to one control on the orange course, which is mapped as a reentrant but is in fact the edge of a large seasonal pond!)

I enjoyed setting these courses a lot: hopefully you will have a lot of fun running them and comparing notes with other orienteers on how you did. With everyone never leaving an area of only a quarter of a square mile in size, you should see plenty of other orienteers out there! Don't follow someone who's not going to the same control as you...

Course lengths:
White: 1.8km, 85m climb, 12 controls
Yellow: 2.2km, 105m climb, 11 controls
Orange: 3.3km, 195m climb, 13 controls
L1: 2.4km, 145m climb, 9 controls
L2: 2.5km, 145m climb, 12 controls
L3: 2.5km, 150m climb, 12 controls
L4: 1.0km, 50m climb, 6 controls
Brown = L3 + L4: 3.5km, 200m climb, 18 controls
Green = L1 + L2: 4.9km, 290m climb, 21 controls
Red = L1 + L2 + L3: 7.4km, 440m climb, 33 controls

William Hawkins, Course Setter

Course        Length        No. Controls         Climb
white         2.2 km             8                40 m
yellow        2.9 km             8                70 m
orange        4.0 km             8                80 m
brown         4.1 km             7               125 m
green         5.7 km            10               185 m
red           7.0 km            10               200 m

 
Course Color      Distance    Controls    Climb Course nickname
 White             1.3km       9           50m  
 Yellow            2.6         11          80    "Hey Mom, Another Hill"
 Orange            3.3         11          130   "Squishy"
 Brown             3.1         11          170   "Do you really want Karl to go up this hill?"
 Green             4.6         12          230   "Happy as a J-Bird"
 Red               5.9         14          265   "Ziggy Played Guitar"

Course       Controls      Length          Climb  
 White          10          1.7 km          15 m  
 Sprint A       19          2.7 km          45 m 
 Sprint B       12          1.8 km          25 m  
 Score-O 24                 5.5 km         105 m