Possum Trot IV

Adventure Racers

The KC Adventure Racing discussion group is full of Possum Trot reports. Here are the current messages.

How did everyone do at the Possum Trot? It was good to see so many people from the club. I finished in just under 3 hours 2:50 or so. I thought the course was pretty challenging there we a lot of ups and downs as usual. I'm especially interested in what some of the first timers thought. I DNF my first year because I ran out of time. It didn't help that it was my first orienteering event and the weather was so bad that I couldn't think straight.

For everyone that didn't do it you missed a good opportunity for some great misery.

Keith -----------------------

Team Braley (Randy & Caroline,)as first timers, tackled the yellow course and finished in 1:02. It was a great event and my wife and I agreed it was more fun than we anticipated it would be. We made a slight navigational error between CP2 and CP3 and were able to get back on course once we located CP4 (A BIG RED BARN IN THE MIDDLE OF AN OPEN FIELD)Thank god for large landmarks.

Randy

Well my goal was to finish under the 5 hour cut-off. I did it but not by much 4:35:02. I had trouble with a few check points which added time. I have to admit to accidentally cheating by finding one CP out of sequence. I had a good time and plan on doing more this winter. To those who haven't tried orienteering this has got to be good training for adventure racing. see ya Bob

Casey, David, Jody and I met our goal of beating the 5 hour cut-off, but just barely (4:56 or so). We had some trouble with CP 6 in the impassible woods but then we started paying attention and working from one tree on the barring to the next. This didn't seem to add much if any time and we would walk strait to the CPs. I highly recommend this technique in situations where there won't be obvious landmarks to show the location of the CP or the distance is long enough that being off by a few degrees would be detrimental.

We ran about 2/5 of the course and had a great time. Next year, we'll shoot for the sub 2 hour point needed to win ; )

Aaron

I beat my "goal" time of 3 hours by only 40 seconds. I thought the hills were extremely tough, but maybe because I ran more of it this year than last year. I'm happy I made such a big improvement in my time, but of course I wish I would have done some things differently. I was one of the few people to choose the wrong controls to skip; I failed to skip 7 and 8. (I skipped 27 and 28, which was at least 600m longer than skipping 7 and 8.) I think the reasons for this were that I was running too hard at the time and I was too firmly attached to my pre-race strategy of skipping later in the race. The worst section for me was from CP19 to CP23, I had some trouble with all of those. I don't know if it was fatigue or the lack of many landmarks in that area. What a great race! But now I have to wait another year!-Eric

 You can take a look at the map and course from the Possum Trot:

http://www.geocities.com/okansas.geo/trot2000/part1.html

http://www.geocities.com/okansas.geo/trot2000/part2.html

http://www.geocities.com/okansas.geo/trot2000/part3.html

http://www.geocities.com/okansas.geo/trot2000/part4.html

As an orienteer, it was great to see some adventure racers at the event. I'll do my best to get some orienteers at the January training adventure race.

My run at this year's Trot was decent. My navigation was a bit rough. I got tired and lost time in the last few kilometers.

I finished 2nd. That's what I would have expected. I was happy, but not suprised, to beat Rich Ruid. Rich beat me a week earlier at the St Louis O' Club 3-hour event. Rich is strong (he's finished the Hardrock 100 miler, 2 or 3 eco-challenges, and 2 Southern Traverse races). But, in a shorter race with a lot of controls to find, I should be able to beat him. We had a good head-to-head race. I saw him off and on until 22.

Orienteer Kansas -- the O' club based in Lawrence -- has a web- discussion with the Trot as a current topic. So far, I'm the only one who has posted anything. You can read the comments or add your own. Go to the OK page and follow the link to the discussion forum. The OK page is at:

http://www.geocities.com/okansas.geo

Michael Eglinski