Florida Orienteering
Little Big Econ State Forest
June 6, 2009
Event Coordinator: Bob Putnam
Course Designer: Will Pirnasch


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

Wow!
What a Day!
If you were there you know what I mean. If you missed it, you really missed it.

Thunder, lightning, torrential rain, some sun, some cool (?) breezes, high water in the river, standing water in the flood plain, waist deep water in some ditches and some of the toughest courses you’ll ever see in Florida. Why do I say they were tough? Look at the results. None of the eight entries finished Green. Only two of eight finished Red. Only four of 15 finished Blue. Overall, 53% of starting entries did not finish and another 10% were over the time limit. And many of these are FLO veterans and accomplished adventure racers. I’m sure the weather had a lot to do with it, but since I ran the blue course myself, I can tell you the courses themselves were indeed difficult. Will Pirnasch and I had discussed at the planning stages how to approach this event and I told him not to let up a bit in deference to the season or the conditions. He didn’t. The thinking was that LBE is fairly friendly to White and Yellow so if beginners show up they’ll have fun, but the usual turnout at LBE consists of FLO veterans who can be trusted to take on really serious courses. So Will designed what would yield approximate standard USOF winning time courses. And I believe he almost succeeded in that. Unfortunately, FLO didn’t succeed in turning out a large enough field to produce those expected winning times. Note that I just said he ‘almost’ succeeded. If he and I could have worked on these courses a little more, and actually run a few of them ourselves, I believe we could at least have everyone finishing, weather permitting. The fact is that LBE continues to be rough enough to slow the pace of even winning runners to a significantly lower pace than at, say, Ocala Forest venues. That skews our estimates of winning time paces and makes the courses such as for last Saturday, too tough in light of the condition of the forest. However, I have to tell you that for the first time since 2004, the floodplain now exhibits swept-clean avenues of hard packed black mud between those huge palmetto stands, and I enjoyed that part of the course the most. The blackberry briar infested fields: not so much.

I have to put a huge asterisk beside my time in the results list and award Michael Moule the first place finish on Blue. I had vetted and hung four of the Blue course controls the week before the event. They included Blue #1, which was a no-brainer I thought, plus Blue #6, 7 and 8. In my defense, the course flow had me approaching these last three from a completely different direction than I used during my vetting visit, so not so much advantage after all.

Usually when I remind people we go “rain or shine” it means very little because we don’t get dumped on much. I cannot recall the last time I had a garage full of wet controls hanging up to dry after an event. I do this time. And I have to believe the weather made lots of folks simply give up and walk in off the course this day, so the high percentage of DNF’s were just bad luck on FLO’s part. We surely hope everyone at least more-or-less enjoyed the day. I saw lots of soaking wet grins.

As for notable folks in attendance it was great to see that Nikki Wright signed up for membership after several years’ lapse. And Matt Mahoney was there after a similar lapse of some time. Eric Saggers has re-emerged from huge job pressure and promises to help organize the January 2010 Croom event. And David Hall, after an absence of a few years, brought a bunch of scouts in from Hollywood, FL. Lastly, Joe Maliszewski is back after a bit of heart-work and looking good.

Many thanks for huge help, especially in the foul-weather setup. Janet Putnam ran registration through the heavy crowd-rush as usual. Greg and Drew Owens set up their tent and ran start/finish. Ray Bruneau brought all the equipment (and took it all home) along with his rain-proof flap-sided tent. Ray Bruneau and Dave Brault finished the last hours of start/finish. Jerry Sirmans had help retrieving from Joe Maliszewski and Safina England.

All in all, the best sort of day we could hope for, given the mostly miserable weather conditions and the flooded river that eliminated parts of our map.

That’s all for the ’09 summer.
Hope to see you all at the start of the Fall season the Saturday after Labor Day at Rock Springs Run State Reserve.

Bob Putnam


WHITE

Name Time
Roberts/Brown 41:15
Reinier Goede 45:45
Nikki Ruppert 45:45
D. Hall 47:25
Troop 423 C 64:05
Troop 423 B 69:20
Troop 854 81:40
Faith Ufferman 81:50

YELLOW

Name Time
Amy Pratt 91:11
Roberts/Brown DNF
Felice Gilmartin DNF

ORANGE

Name Time
Lorena Kleinmann 104:20
Safina England 113:20
David Peck 119:00
Eric & Nancy Camden 133:00
Warburton DNF
Cindy LaVigne DNF
Team Grimison DNF
Kathy Ramsdell OT
Glenn Phillips OT

GREEN

Name Time
Dennis & Carolyn DNF
Girard & Nary DNF
Joe Maliszewski DNF
Jack Cash DNF
The Wingmen DNF
Jim Fuedner DNF
Kris Mante DNF
Hawkins / Lunt DNF

RED

Name Time
Jerry Sirmans 157:30
Susane Thompson 176:00
Team Lovebirds DNF
Fig Jam DNF
Nathan & Katie DNF
Ray Bruneau DNF
Team Griffield OT
Dr. Scott-Bohn OT

BLUE

Name Time
Bob Putnam ** 93:15
Michael Moule 101:55
Pangea Ad. Racing 141:30
Mark Roberts 159:10
Chris Johnson DNF
Drew Owens DNF
Eric Saggers DNF
Matt Mahoney DNF
Tim Martino DNF
Nikki Wright DNF
Jim Feudner DNF
Cortney McNamara DNF
Team Chloe DNF
Greg Kalmbach DNF
Go Blue OT


NOTES

DNF   Did Not Finish
DQ Disqualified (Missed Controls)
OT Over 3 Hour Time Limit


Created 13-June-2009