What a day it was!
Good crowd. Good Courses. Fine fellowship. No horses were frightened. All orienteers were recovered. And no complaining rangers.
I'm trying to think up a good alternative to the acronym RSRSR, appropriate to my experience. It's hard, because neither dehydration, exhaustion, chiggers, nor itching begins with an R or an S.
I have not had so many chigger bites after an event in years.
It was warmer than I expected (understatement #1).
It was funner than I expected (grammatical contortion #1).
And mysteries abound: Was Chip Delany (Notoriously famous Sci-Fi author) really there, or was it the current non-de-plume of Dave Ousley. I thought at first Dave was disguising himself as Artur Intson, the M35 from club OKZA in Riga, Latvia, but then I see that Artur really was there! And turned in a fine time, too. Perhaps he'll accept this invitation to respond to the FLO Yahoo Group with his impressions of orienteering in Florida. And finally, Andy Capp was there - No kidding; says so right here on the waiver sheet. How hot was it? No superlatives needed. 90°F at midday. Full sun. Not at all a good day for Derek B. to try out his new Treklite O-suit/gaiters designed for more northern climes. I didn't even want sleeves on my pretty, new, red, very porous lightweight O-top after about 1 km of running, but I can't bring myself to mutilate it yet.
Coursesetter Arild Orsleie did not hang all controls really low, as he often threatens, but he did provide a memorable 1km leg across open fields - my daughter Kate gets 'field-sick' on such as those. On that leg I drank my whole supply of water, so you know the 'elephant tracks' of prior competitors through the waist high grassy parts were most welcome.
It was toward the end of that open field leg about 3km into the 6.8km red course that I was joined by old (young) FLO veteran Paul Hodges, who had already finished his red course. He was the only one to accept my offer to shadow me while I ran, talking about what I was doing and looking for. Poor Paul; by the time he reached me he had already run about 12km on the day and I was already too pooped to talk much. He graciously assured me it was worth it.
From the results I see 143 starts from 139 people. Not bad in light of the weather and having only Titusville and Cypress Creek representing JROTC's. And thanks so much to Titusville parents who BBQ'ed enough food to provide the FLO volunteers with lunch - that was terrific.
From the results I also see: a) Shane Keys from Titusville HS handily winning Yellow, b) the Pardy Party coming in first on Orange (yet again, it seems) in what looks like a strong field of first three places, c) Kristin & Keith Caruso making their long drive from Tampa worthwhile by dominating Brown, and d) Derek Bohn, our Event Coordinator, edging out Joe Maliszewski on Green by only 3 minutes. One very odd part of these results was having Walenty Prytulo being out over 100 minutes on Orange, bad back or not. Some discussion took place about Walenty devoting 40 minutes to Orange #4, but no protests were filed and the results stand. One very hotly competitive part in the results is the placing of the three fastest female individuals on red: Bev Ousley, Andy Holman, and Debbie Gottschalk, clustered within about 10 minutes. All times tended to be longish, but that only reflected the difficult conditions and the consistently challenging courses. Impressively, only about 14% of entries did not finish for whatever reason; a testament to good course design, I think.
If you visited the brown 'v' pit near the east side of the courses, those were bear bones you saw. If you thought to save a few seconds by bee-lining through the electric-fenced horse pasture, you now know what electric fences feel like. If you were the couple in front of me as I tripped over an old barbed wire fence, you know what Splat sounds like.
Thanks to the big-time travellers to this event, including Artur: Sharon Jenkins group from Bonita Springs below Ft. Meyers. Andy Capp from Jacksonville, and Dave Hatton from Jacksonville Beach. Dave Duschenes and the Carusos from Tampa/St. Pete. And I wonder if Paul Hodges, Dennis Godber, Matthew Ellman's group and Bryan Barrett's group, all from Brandon, were aware of one another. Our sincere thanks for your monster drives just to spend the day with us.
Thanks to all for parking so orderly and perfectly, and so far as we can tell, paying the entrance fees so conscientiously. The park rangers will appreciate us (even) more. Thanks to volunteers: Derek for EC'ing, Arild for course design, control placement and full time everything else, Bev & Dave for being there end-to-end, Russ Steinke for start/finish, Joe Maliszewski and Ray Bruneau for control retrieval, and I'm sure we picked on a few others to help out during the day. Thanks to all.
Check the spellings in the results below and let Dave Ousley know of required changes (dave@JunkFoodForThought.com) before he posts them to the web. Hope you enjoyed it.
(Remember, no June event at all this year. Next event is summer meeting July 12 at LBE Snow Hill Road HQ with Yellow, Orange & Green courses.)
Bob
| Name | Time |
| Mathew A. Ellman (G5) | 50:24 |
| Bryan Barrett (G4) | 61:30 |
| Ginger Stamper (G4) | DNF |
| Name | Time |
| Shane Keys (M) | 56:46 |
| Richard Pattillo (M) | 81:03 |
| Bob Bates (G4) | 81:25 |
| Boy Scout Troop 452 (G8) | 84:30 |
| Sharon Jenkins (G4) | 90:40 |
| Jeff Misa (M) | 91:09 |
| Michele Monse (F) | 94:29 |
| William Thompson (M) | 97:35 |
| Christina Martinez (F) | 107:05 |
| Jackie & Rob Turbot (G2) | 111:50 |
| Joe Rosier (M) | 128:20 |
| Mandy Parks (G2) | 140:10 |
| Alicia Johnson (G2) | DNF |
| Jay Turner (M) | DNF |
| Name | Time |
| Pardy Party (G2) | 76:07 |
| Cheryl Flynn & Laura Motallo (G2) | 82:01 |
| Jeff Honker (M) | 92:10 |
| Sarah Braddock & Alicia Vaugn (G2) | 106:10 |
| Kevin Harrelson (G5) | 107:01 |
| Walenty Prytolo (M) | 117:07 |
| David Mahnken (M) | 121:15 |
| Charlotte Smith (G2) | 128:17 |
| Austin Quinn (M) | 136:02 |
| Adam Hugoboom (M) | 142:58 |
| Mathew Ellman (G4) | 144:31 |
| Kevin Jimenez (M) | 146:44 |
| Don Tanchin (G2) | 150:45 |
| Steven Odermatt (M) | 153:02 |
| Cypress Creek HS JRROTC (G3) | DNF |
| Karnehm & Hood (G2) | DNF |
| Name | Time |
| Keith Caruso (G2) | 88:55 |
| James Pridemore (G6) | 107:03 |
| John, Karen, & Rachel Kramer (G3) | 125:26 |
| Dave Daschenes (G4) | 157:29 |
| Bret Barker (G2) | DQ |
| Elsie & David Mathews (G2) | DQ |
| Jeff Taylor & Donna Kolb (G2) | DNF |
| Russ Steinke (M) | DNF |
| Name | Time |
| Derek Bohn (M) | 78:08 |
| Joe Maliszewski (M) | 81:03 |
| Scott Sloan (M) | 93:54 |
| David Cutler (M) | 96:09 |
| Jataya Taylor (F) | 135:27 |
| John Joiner (G2) | 145:49 |
| Team Rosenberg (G2) | 149:10 |
| Andy Horn (M) | 164:34 |
| James Fendner (G2) | 166:35 |
| Kevin Schmidt (M) | DNF |
| Name | Time |
| Bob Putnam (M) | 62:03 |
| Artur Intson (M) | 73:19 |
| Chip Delany (M) | 76:48 |
| Paul Hodges (M) | 80:34 |
| Bryan Schultz (M) | 84:31 |
| Dwayne Jenkins (G4) | 91:25 |
| Mike Schmidt (G4) | 97:58 |
| Beverly Ousley (F) | 111:35 |
| Andrea Holman (F) | 113:48 |
| Team Dirty Fish (G2) | 118:20 |
| Tom Sammett (M) | 119:15 |
| Ken Miller (M) | 120:45 |
| Debbie Gottschalk (F) | 122:56 |
| Williamson, Williamson & Bruneau (G3) | 133:35 |
| Kyle Tallent (G2) | 149:10 |
| Dennis Godber (M) | 166:42 |
| Bryan Davis (G2) | 168:15 |
| James Pohl (G4) | 171:05 |
| Norman Lei (M) | DNF |
| Dave Hatten (M) | DNF |
| DNF | Did Not Finish |
| DQ | Disqualified - over 3 hour time limit |