Possum Trot IV

Mike Carlson report

Mike at the Possum Trot:

I would like to write this article for two reasons. First, to encourage the club to organize an annual event like the Possum Trot and second, give everyone a little information on my weekend to Kansas/Kansas City.

I was able to schedule my first "out of Minnesota" orienteering experience based on a little ingenuity with my work schedule. Having the need to see some clients in the Omaha, NE area, I arranged it around the much more important weekend activity of orienteering. As some of you know, I have become somewhat of a mad zealot of this wonderful sport. I have not missed a MNOC event in the last year, unless I was out of town on some boring business trip. Doing all the mail-in O's that Ian Harding has so ably put together and also setting and running my own practice O's in Lebanon Hills. I just cant seem to get enough orienteering.

I arrived in Kansas City in the early evening on Friday, December 1st. Unknown to me, that there happened to be a pretty important local football game the following day, which made it a little difficult finding a hotel room. The Kansas State Jayhawks played the Oklahoma Sooners in some kind of a title game at Arrowhead Stadium in KC. But, I was able to find a low priced warm bed in Olathe, KS. About, midway between the two orienteering events for the weekend.

Saturday, I went to Clinton State Park just outside of Lawrence, KS where the Orienteering Club of Kansas was having their Kansas State Short Course Championships. The club's motto is, "Everyone wants to be an OK orienteer". The club is fairly small, I believe I heard it has about 35 members. It seems to be run very well with several excellent orienteers, Mary Jones is the current President. The meet was set up with 3 courses, a white 1.5k, an orange 3.0k and the championship course set at 5.0k. I think there were about 12 runners for the championship course and several other participants (walkers and couples). The event was much like a standard O-meet, except they allowed the participants to copy the course along with map corrections before giving out start times.

The Park is situated on the shore of a reservoir about 3.5 kilometers long by 1-2 kilometers wide. Wooded areas were primarily by the shore and up three or four large re-entrants. There is a large part of the park that is fairly open terrain. It was fairly easy to orienteer within the park area, so that made finish times pretty fast. I'll put it this way, it must have been fairly easy, because I ran the course in under 10 minute kilometers, something I have been trying to accomplish and up till now hadn't been able to do. I finished fourth and got a ribbon, I felt so good.

Everyone that I talked to was going to be at the Possum Trot event the next day, so it was great to get to know them. On my way back the hotel I stopped at Ernie Miller Park in Olathe, KS and Shawnee Mission Park in Shawnee Mission, KS. Both parks have permanent O courses set up in them, I obtained the packets of information from both. The Ernie Miller park is set up with a basic white and some yellow/orange locations. The park is fairly small and is good for beginners and Cub Scouts. Shawnee Mission Park is a beautiful large park (1780 acres) with 75 controls placed, many would be considered expert locations. I orienteered to 3 of them before darkness chased me out of the woods. It surprised me that the controls were only 4 inch by 4 inch metal painted squares nailed to trees. I guess I would prefer to use posts. Each square has two letters to identify the control, it is painted with the orange and white O symbol. I would recommend the MNOC set about to put a permanent O course, or TRIM course, in one of our parks. (I have never heard what TRIM actually stands for).

Saturday night the Possum Trot Orienteering Club got together at Godfathers Pizza for a pre-race get together. It was a good time, I had purchased a MNOC shirt for a gift exchange that I had been informed about. Everyone seemed to enjoy the fact that an outsider (me) had brought a club shirt to give away. There were a couple of people from the St. Louis Orienteering Club there as well.

Sunday morning was clear and cold, I heard that KC got down to 18 degrees Saturday night. But, the morning was so bright that the cold was not that noticeable. The Possum Trot is an annual event being held for the fourth time this year. A couple a nationally ranked orienteers were present. Mark Everitt is on the U.S. National Team and has been orienteering around the world. I was able to talk with him at some length about the elite competitors and world competitions. It was really cool to talk with a world-class competitor. One thing I noticed, he ties his shoes the same way I do...

This years Possum Trot was located in East Fleming Park Nature Preserve along the shores of Lake Jacomo east of I-470 and south of I-70 a short distance outside of Kansas City. The lake (with I believe is a reservoir) has many fingers of water which allow the orienteer to get many glimpses of the lake while going from control to control. Major re-entrants abound, so there are many decisions to be made. Go down into a re-entrant and slog up the other side or should one go around. There is a fair amount of open area, but plenty of trees and fight to make route choices around vegetation important as well. The Park looks to be about 4 kilometers by 4 kilometers in size. The map was done in 1:15000 scale with 5 meter contours. Not having seen too many 15000 scale maps, I was a bit confused on the distance of several of the legs. Of course, exhaustion has something to do with that as well.

The Trot (as it is affectionately known by all "us veterans") is a long, long course, 16.1k. The big difference between this and a standard course is that this is a mass start and you can skip 2 out of the 29 controls. At first, I didn't think I would really care for the idea of a start with so many people, but, I have definitely changed my mind now that I have experienced it. What great fun all the people that knew each other were having! Lots of chiding and ribbing each other as we stood around in a large circle waiting for the starter to countdown. Maps were pre-printed and placed by the meet organizers face down in the circle. There were (I believe 35 participants) and as the starter finally counted down ...3...2...1...GO, everyone grabbed for the nearest map and quickly studied the details for the triangle (start location) and the direction to the first control. There was much yelling and whooping as the pack thundered eastward across an open field down a slight slope toward the first of many wooded areas. Skipping controls also gives you some strategic decisions to make as you scan the map. The configuration of the setting of the controls made the choice fairly obvious for the advanced "Trotter". With that said, I straight away made the wrong decision on which two to skip. I reasoned as I ran to the first control that I would save my skips until the end, thereby giving myself a psychological lift towards the end of the race. So I didn't really look at the first half of the course. Well, as it turns out, almost everyone skipped controls 7 and 8, while this out-of-towner from Minnesota skipped 27 and 28. Oh well, I will know next time to look over the whole course and make a more informed decision.

The persons who would be considered favorites were largely unknown to me, except for Mark Everitt. The only time I spotted him was his sprint away from the start. I do mean sprint, this guy can flat out fly, his winning time was 1 hour 50 minutes (less than 7 minutes a kilometer). When I saw that I said to myself, "are you kidding me?" There were 3 others within 10-12 minutes of him. But, clearly he was the class of the field. I had thought I should be able to do the course in a little over 3 hours. Given the fact that I have never gone that far, but thought I could jog most of the way around. Wow...was I wrong! I was able to move along pretty well about halfway 7.5 to 8k, after that I went downhill...fast. I could go into all the physical ailments but, to save some of my dignity, I won't. Suffice it to say, groin, calf and lower back. I will tell you all this, it was a battle to stay upright for the last couple of kilometers. Did I almost forget to admit what my time was? Well, 4 hours and 6 minutes, I think I may have been in about 25th place. Not very good, but, I finished which makes it worth while.

This event was simply put, a great experience, I was able to congratulate the organizer Dick Neubarger, who I believe is also the Possum Trot's Club President and thought that Michael Shifley set an excellent course with many, many route choices to decide on. All in all, I am looking forward to my next out of state meet, though, I don't think I will plan on missing any of the events of the Minnesota Orienteering Club.

Mike Carlson