Florida Orienteering
Moss Park
October 11, 2008
Event Coordinator: Jonathan Linforth


Courses: WHITE | YELLOW | ORANGE | GREEN | RED | NOTES

AN “EYEWITNESS” REPORT BY A NON-ATTENDEE

I’ve now seen the results and discussed the event with some who were there and we have this to say:

Congratulations to all!
To all who attended!
To all who Helped!
To all who succeeded in completing their course!

You folks must have had a wonderful time. The weather was fantastic. Lots of JROTC cadets joined FLO for the Saturday courses and lots more participated in the Saturday Training, followed by their Sunday courses – using exactly the same Yellow, Orange and Green courses as FLO used.

All told, I counted 358 starters, for our biggest event of the year. Thus, all the more reason for me, the coursesetter, to be chagrinned by the overall percentage of DQ’s on these courses. Evidently they were tougher than I’d planned. There were 48 entries out of the 161 total who did not finish for one reason or another. That’s almost 30%. Only the notorious events of Wekiwa Springs November 2006 (over 40%), and the even more notorious June 2007 LBE (over 60% DNF) washed out a larger proportion of attendees. I must apologize to all who feel frustrated after such a day. Sometimes it’s your own fault you don’t finish, but when I see a huge ratio like we had at this event, I have to concede that course design had to have played a part.

On the other hand, consider the winning times for the courses: White: 85 minutes; Yellow: 26 minutes; Orange 73 minutes; Green 73 minutes; Red 74 minutes. These are not too bad when we note that only one party went out on White. The Orange is longish at 73 minutes. We ordinarily like to see 55 minute winning times there, but then we had that long causeway run in and out, so that’s an entirely reasonable winning time under the circumstances. So I feel a little better about my designs.

I call myself an “eyewitness” because I had visited every control point a few months prior, while designing FLO courses and the JROTC Training courses, and vetting control locations. I was a little worried about how high the water would be, both on the causeway and in the woods, since I did a good deal of wading in August. I thought I had provided some route choices involving crossing of the recently bush-hogged areas, but I doubt many took advantage of such short-cuts – the vegetation is growing back very fast and we’ll have to re-map again soon.

I want to call attention, as I do periodically, to the informal FLO rule about number of people in a group. We like to say maximum group size on Red is 2, Green 3, Orange 4, Yellow 5 and White 6. As for most events, I see a few instances of group sizes exceeding these suggestions. Not many; just a few, so it not too serious a problem yet. But it is a problem. Orienteering is not a group activity. It would be a problem if all groups went out at the maximum suggested group size. It would detract immensely from the fun to be had by all. Groups are permitted only because we recognize that it is in fact more fun that way sometimes, and that a certain amount of instruction and training is helpful to newcomers and competing as a group can help. However, everyone should always be mindful of the need to minimize group size. I know it might cost more to break up into more and smaller groups, but Orienteering is notoriously inexpensive to begin with, so I would hope that’s not a big factor. The over-riding factor should be the avoidance of large numbers of people walking into and out of each control’s immediate area, giving away the location to others and eliminating the competitive factor that requires us to each find the control by means of our own wits. Also, groups tend to be unavoidably noisy, and that too offsets the competitive challenges to be had, if only because of the luck involved as one person hears the shouts of success from a group having just found a control while the next person has no such assistance. The game is simply more fun when groups are smaller. Please be attentive to this in your planning. Not only will we individual runners be immensely grateful but so will the other, smaller, groups.

One other reminder: Our Waiver Card asks that all groups write the names of each member on the back of your waiver card. Many thanks to those who do, but you are a minority. This is a Safety Issue. Please comply. If we ever have to invoke Search & Rescue, this is among the first things we need to know.

As for the event itself, I heard suspicions that one or two controls had been misplaced, but not by much. However, the Green course control that gave everyone trouble was hung very low among palmetto, whereas the plan had been to hang it high on open forest, so that made quite a difference. More than a little luck was needed to find that one.

I want to call attention to Chris Johnson, who very nearly broke the magic 10 min/km barrier. On Yellow we had an entry named “Christopher” whose time initially showed as 14:00 minutes. This would be world championship pace and we suspect a handwriting problem. If you read this, let us know what you think your time was. On Orange, while 11 cadets beat the winning time from Saturday’s FLO results, there were only 11 seconds between the winning Hawks and Kevin Kurzawa’s second place. On Green Mike Dempsey’s Saturday time of 80:27 was beaten only by Harry Tuazon’s 73 minutes on Sunday. Terrific times. We still have to figure out what Jerry Sirmans’ time really was because he went out with a red card but got a green map. And I must be especially apologetic to long-time O-veteran and FLO-pioneer Dave Cutler who returned to us after a long absence only to be caught by the Green course DNF-bug.

My thanks to all the helpers who pitched in: particularly Jonathan Linforth, who volunteered to serve as EC - at the last minute - and provided instruction. Lorena Kleinmann and her new husband, whose name I still have not written down so I must still list only her maiden name; they both ran start/finish for most of the day. Mike Dempsey ran registration before being relieved by Jerry Sirmans. Andy Canelos was going to set some Red controls but Toby Henson’s JROTC crew did them ALL – and then they retrieved them ALL; 59 controls altoghether. There may have been other helpers whose names I do not have, but thanks to all anyway.

Hope you enjoyed it! See you next time.

Bob Putnam


WHITE

Name Time
Pussycats 85:34

YELLOW

Name Time
Team Whitted 26:34
Pine Ridge #1 32:01
Boone #1 33:33
Lewis 40:00
Pine Ridge #3 42:00
Boone #6 43:09
Boone #3 45:20
Boone #2 49:45
3 Amigos 52:00
Todd Shaw 52:49
Pine Ridge #2 56:00
Centenial #2 56:40
Boone #7 57:04
Graeber Team 57:20
Anthony Pena 64:20
Laurie 66:57
Christopher 71:00
Boone #4 75:12
Boone #8 77:30
Robida 86:56
Centenial #1 89:10
Boone #9 90:40
Mosaicrazy 96:26
Boone #10 98:38
Eisingel 106:00
Dean 109:43
Jo Chasar 119:38

ORANGE

Name Time
Hawks 118:40
Kurzawa 118:51
Centenial #4 123:00
TGK 123:25
Oscar Martinez 128:25
AHS Chidlow 128:27
AHS Ward 128:32
Ricardo Alonso 133:40
Hawkins 152:50
AHS Osburn 153:42
AT&T DNF
Darvison Calo DNF
Waylon Gruszka DNF
AHS Gilmore DNF
AHS Riga DNF
Boone #1 DNF
Boone #2 DNF
Boone #3 DNF
Boone #4 DNF
Boone #5 DNF
Boone #7 DNF
Boone #1 DNF
Centenial #5 DNF
Oveido HS DNF
Pine Ridge #1 DNF

GREEN

Name Time
Mike Dempsey 80:27
Dennis & Carolyn 121:00
John Griffin 192:09
Bret Barker DQ
K Mante DQ
Bruno DNF
David Cutler DNF
Lammi Lambert DNF
Len Hungerford DNF
JAX-MR DNF
Centenial #6 DNF
Centenial #7 DNF
Centenial #8 DNF
Pine Ridge #1 DNF

RED

Name Time
Chris J 74:30
David Shuman 92:14
Andrea Canelos 97:33
Go Blue 99:14
O'Neil 103:07
Will Pirnasch 122:48
Centenial #9 136:04
Courtney McNamara 143:25
Da Bears 164:30
Sam & Alan OT
Tuff E Nuff OT
Boris Humberg DQ
Nils Humberg DQ
Jerry Sirmans DNF
Brittany Armstrong DNF


NOTES

DNF   Did Not Finish
DQ Disqualified (Punched wrong control)
OT Over 3 Hour Time Limit


Created 12-October-2008