Saturday's courses were left in place at the LBE Barr Street site for a duplicate event on Sunday.
Thanks to Dave Brault and Jim Feudner for staying late Sunday to finish up and retrieve controls.
Thanks to Ron Eaglin and Jonathan Linforth for journeyman duties all day Saturday.
It was supposed to be really easy for Ron and Jonathan, but.... At least it was perfect weather. 75°F, sunny, no wind, river level acceptably low. Marsh/floodplain water levels pretty low.
However - Lessons, Lessons, Lessons:
1) The permit said 75 people max., per day. We asked you for pre-registrations. Told everyone that if they show up without pre-registering they risk not being allowed to start. In the end, it almost looked as if the pre-registrants were out-numbered.
2) But, the rangers never came around to count heads anyway.
3) And, the rangers never even came around to stock the honor-system fee envelope box.
4) The overflow site at Geneva Wilderness was a great idea, worked well, and great Thanks are due to Jim Staubach's Riverview HS JROTC cadets who ran that for us.
5) If I'm going to set tough courses, I ought to warn everyone beforehand. I think I DQ'd half the field by making seriously difficult courses and not warning anyone that this would not be your day to 'move up'.
6) All HSJROTC cadets would enjoy themselves more, and learn orienteering skills more, if they were placed on courses they can finish. We're getting lots of JROTC DQ's and I'm concerned that there may be less enthusiasm than would otherwise be. That said, they all still love it, even though many many of them are failing to finish. So how much better could be it be, I wonder. Think about it.
7) On days like these, with tough courses, the likelihood of people being out over 3 hours increases. I should have mentioned this in pre-event publicity. Three hours is the Overtime Limit we've always used. This limit is not imposed to cut short your fun. It is to preserve the organizers' sanity and to ensure SAFETY. Please please please pay attention to it.
8) I was not at the site on Saturday so I took the supplies to Ron Eaglin's house Friday night. I overplanned for this event so much that I just plain forgot to include in the meet supplies some very vital equipment. Ron and Jonathan were surprised on Saturday morning to find that I had not provided any yellow control cards, had not included the rental compasses, and had not given them any pens to work with, either black pens for registration or red pens for master maps. They were all back in my garage, locked safely away. Those of you who are FLO veterans from long enough back will remember that I've forgotten the maps themselves on occasion, so should not be too surprised. (Lesson: Someone else has to do these things.)
9) The Geneva courses were apparently much more user friendly that the LBE courses. Only one out of 27 entries failed to finish, the winning times were about what I'd expected, and they were in fact easier courses than usual.
10) Open fields at LBE are not easy to run across; less so if you have allergies. Does anyone know what those millions of beautiful yellow flowers are? I know they are not Goldenrod and I'm fairly sure they are not mustard.
Another note of interest is that Ron Eaglin took two other Adventure Racers out on the Red course Saturday night for some AR night training. It took them 4 hours, which is pretty good, I think. They didn't mention any particular difficulties or critter hazards, but maybe we can talk them into giving us a newsletter report.
Note in the results lists (whenever and wherever they may appear - watch the FLO web page) that there are two sets. One set is for Geneva Wilderness Saturday only (Yellow and Orange, no one did White) and the other is for the combined results of both days at LBE Barr Street (Yellow, Orange, Brown, Green and Red). You will also note that the winning times for the LBE courses are a tad longish. About 100 minutes for the winners of the three Advanced courses is about as hard as they come. There was to have been a purpose in this. Next month is the 2002 Florida Championships at Wekiwa Springs. I wanted everyone to prepare for those courses, which can also be fairly classed as 'difficult'. The design objective, assuming everyone selects the appropriate course for their skill level (big assumption?) is that the winning times will be White: 25-30 minutes; Yellow: 35-40 minutes; Orange: 50-55 minutes; Brown: 45-50 minutes; Green: 50-55 minutes; Red: 60-65 minutes. Now don't look at those numbers and think Orange is harder than Brown. Brown course competitors are supposed to be people with Advanced skills, so they are being challenged with more difficult control locations.
But I'll cover that in another article.
Thanks to everyone who made it a successful two-day event. Thanks to all the HS JROTC units, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, who turned out. This was a first for us and in many ways an experiment. Your patience with our learning curve is much appreciated, and we will do our best to see to it we never have to do this pre-registration thing again.
See you all next month on December 14th (That's the 14TH!) at Wekiwa Springs.
Bob Putnam
| Name | Time |
| -no white course offered- |
| Name | Time |
| Leah Ritchhart (3) | 66:30 |
| Hamilton (2) | 83:04 |
| Joe Koerner(7) | 88:40 |
| Tom Tschopp (4) | 94:00 |
| Kidd (2) | 105:40 |
| Sunshine Club #2 (5) | 119:50 |
| Oviedo JROTC #1 (3) | 123:15 |
| Michele Morse | 127:16 |
| Troop 687 (4) | 138:00 |
| Oviedo JROTC #3 (2) | DNF |
| Worischeck (5) | NTR |
| Bennet (5) | NTR |
| Valk Family (3) | NTR |
| Name | Time |
| Walenty Prytulo | 66:29 |
| Oviedo JROTC #2 (3) | 86:24 |
| Schweiterman (4) | 96:00 |
| Dempsey (2) | 100:50 |
| Akers (4) | 112:22 |
| Russ Steinke | 122:35 |
| Heather Frazier | 126:45 |
| Tammy Donaldson (2) | 147:56 |
| Dave Frazier | 151:00 |
| Dave Mahnken | DQ |
| J.J. Richards (3) | DQ |
| Kim Johnson (5) | DNF |
| Cathy Frazier | DNF |
| Name | Time |
| John Ide | 99:03 |
| Jataya Taylor (TJROTC #1) | 116:00 |
| Carlson & Keyes (3) | 139:11 |
| Alicia Padrick (TJROTC #2) | 160:40 |
| Bret Barker (2) | DQ |
| Zielinski (4) | DQ |
| Elsie Matthews | DQ |
| Sunshine Club #1 (4) | DNF |
| Cheryl Flynn & Laura Metallo (2) | DNF |
| Karen Pardy (2) | DNF |
| Tony Ludwig & Sandy Wordell (2) | DNF |
| Name | Time |
| Henson TJROTC | 110:51 |
| A&D Gottschalk (2) | 117:40 |
| Andie Holman | 126:32 |
| Derek Bohn (2) | 138:27 |
| Patrick Paroline | 142:47 |
| Clayburn (3) | 170:57 |
| Tischer (2) | 172:09 |
| Team #119 (4) | 179:01 |
| Team #120 (4) | 179:01 |
| R. Stoner | NTR |
| David Farrier-GAOC (2) | DNF |
| Dent | DNF |
| Scott Sloan | DNF |
| Bryan Stone | DNF |
| Gibbs #1 (4) | DNF |
| Gibbs #2 (4) | DNF |
| Gibbs #3 (5) | DNF |
| Gibbs #4 (4) | DNF |
| Gibbs #5 (4) | DNF |
| Gibbs #6 (4) | DNF |
| Name | Time |
| Barry Hyde | 105:33 |
| Harry Wiggum | 113:50 |
| Joe Maliszewski | DQ |
| Schoenher (3) | DQ |
| Team Dirty Fish (2) | DQ |
| Lundin (2) | DQ |
| Arild Orsleie | DNF |
| Jim Feudner | DNF |
| John Ide | DNF |
| Mark Ritchhart | DNF |
| Glen Holman | DNF |
| Jack Cash | DNF |
| Boca Ciega JROTC #1 (3) | DNF |
| Boca Ciega JROTC #2 (2) | DNF |
| Boca Ciega JROTC #3 (3) | DNF |
| Boca Ciega JROTC #4 (3) | DNF |
| Boca Ciega JROTC #5 (3) | DNF |
| Boca Ciega JROTC #6 (3) | DNF |
| Boca Ciega JROTC #7 (3) | DNF |
| Boca Ciega JROTC #8 (3) | DNF |
| Boca Ciega JROTC #9 (4) | DNF |
| Boca Ciega JROTC #10 (1) | DNF |
| Dave Crane (3) | NTR |
| Barolet/Galloway (2) | NTR |
| DNF | Did Not Finish |
| DQ | Disqualified - over 3 hour time limit |
| NTR | No Time Recorded |
| GAOC | Georgia O' Club |
| Gibbs | Bibbs HS JROTC |