Possum Trot XII

December 6-7, 2008

Expectations are a tricky thing. While I firmly hold that you have to believe you can do something in order to accomplish it, I've also found that some of my best races have been at events where I brought no more attitude than simply wanting to give it a go. After a year of fairly dismal orienteering results, I certainly wasn't going to burden myself with high hopes for the Possum Trot.

Loop 1 map. Loop 2 map.

It's an interesting and spectator-friendly course with two loops. I run it hard, but not all out because I've been fighting some chest congestion all week and don't want to be hacking up a lung in the main event tomorrow. I finish third behind Minnesota's Justin Bakken (who just breaks 20 minutes) and Pete Curtis. Shafer-Skelton finishes right behind me to win the women's side.

Sunday dawns with cold temps, but otherwise outstanding weather. Given the amount of climb we can expect at Bluffwoods, the cold isn't really a negative, either. There will be plenty of heat generated while covering the 12.8Km course. The field is not as deep as it has been in past years, but there's still plenty of quality at the top. Four-time winner Mikell Platt is present as is "Lifetime Trot Leader" Michael Eglinski (if I have any real goal for this year, it's to finish ahead of him - I'm in second on the standings, a mere 7 points back). Bakken and Curtis are primed after their 1-2 showing yesterday. Tom Puzak looks to improve on 10th place in his first try last year. The wildcard is Igor Postica from Moldova. (Who even knew that was a country? Turns out it's between Romania and Ukraine). Aside from noting that he's competed at World University Championships, nobody knows much about the slightly built 19-year-old. There's not much point in trying to find out - his English is almost non-existent. Fortunately, course setter Mike Shiffman is Russian, so at least somebody can communicate with him. On the women's side, Anna is the favorite, but she can expect plenty of push from Minnesota's Julia Bohnen and Colorado's Sharon Crawford.

Map. RouteGadget Map.

The race opens with the first of many trips up the ridges. Although I've warmed up adequately, I'm not wanting to blow up my legs or lungs in the first five minutes of the event. I take a traverse route slightly left of the redline to reduce the grade and take the opportunity to look at the skip decisions. Double skips are forbidden this year (I'm not sure why - it would have been a better challenge if they were allowed), and the only single skip that jumps out at me in the first half is 4 (I missed 5, which is also good, but I doubt I would have taken it anyway). I get to the top of the ridge the leaders the leaders still close. At the control, I take the punch from Platt and figure I can't be doing too badly if I'm even with him.

A pack starts to form on the way to 2, but it immediately splits as we all attack the control from different points along the stream. Platt takes the most direct approach, traversing the slope while Curtis, Bakken, and I go further right to attack directly from below. Postica misses the attack altogether and continues down the stream, resulting in a costly boom. While I can't see the actual ruin, I spot a terrace on the hillside that looks very much like an old foundation and head there (the fact that Platt is also headed right at it increases my confidence significantly). Curtis and Bakken continue right and lose some ground.

As Platt and I hit the road leading to 3, I take another look at the skips. 4 still looks good, but not good enough to justify skipping early. 22 saves the most distance. 20 is also obvious, but I like 16 better because it saves almost as much distance and cuts out a lot of climb and vegetation as well. 5 is still in my blind spot for whatever reason. I decide to go with 16 and 22 unless the pack skips early.

But that's the funny thing - what pack? We're not even 10 minutes in and things are already disintegrating. Past experience has been that after the initial sorting, a main pack forms behind one or two leaders. As I'm running with the leader, it occurs to me that I might not be doing a whole lot of pack running this year. At any rate, things are about to move into even more uncharted territory because Platt begins to drop back leaving me alone in the lead - an honor I've never held in the Trot (except for very briefly at PT2 and PT6 when I got ahead by skipping earlier than the leaders). At first I figure he's just playing head games with the skip 4 decision coming up. However, as I climb up the stream bank on the way to 4, I see that he appears to be having real difficulty getting down. I wonder if maybe he turned an ankle. There's no time to contemplate it; Bakken and Curtis have caught up again and scramble up the bank ahead of me. Both of them miss right, but Bakken recovers in time to punch just ahead of me.

Justin then turns on the speed and by the time we're back on the road heading to 5, he's got a pretty significant gap on me. He takes a line right of the water stop and contours along the ridge to the control. I take the lower line next to the marsh and it's good enough that I've caught him by the control. Leaving the control, I head almost straight north, planning on taking the road to the field to approach 6. Bakken stays closer to the redline and runs full speed into the barb wire fence. The impact is enough that he flips over the fence and is stuck dangling. I go over to assist when he calls for help. There's a big group of folks who skipped 4 coming up the hill and they get to him first and get him back upright. The gash in his leg looks nasty, but he seems to be running well. So well, in fact, that once again I find myself trailing him (and Puzak, who seems to have appeared out of nowhere). I miss 6 left and by the time I've recovered, Bakken is gone, Puzak is ahead (but in sight) and now Postica has made a return. So much for being in the lead; I'm now fighting to stay in the top 5.

I run just above the stream to 7 and encounter no small amount of trashy vegetation along the way. Postica appears to be better at getting through the thick stuff and he puts a gap on me. Puzak drops back and by the time I get to the control, I'm alone. I pass Eglinski going to 8. He's already skipped and confesses that he just doesn't have the legs for such severe terrain.

I consider the low route to 9, but decide that running the ridge top will give a better approach to the control. Once on top of the ridge, I'm having a bit of trouble keeping map contact because the vegetation is really thick in spots. Others tell me there was a nice deer track on the ridge, but I sure didn't see it. I get to what looks to be the trail heading west to the control, but I think I've still got another spur to go. I have just about concluded that this must be the indistinct trail (and that I've actually got 2 spurs to go) when Bakken comes running up the trail on his way to 10. Whew! That mistake could have been expensive. I run down the trail and get to the control just as Postica arrives.

We take the trail around to 10 and the trail and field to 11. He stays on the trail most of the way to 12 while I stay high and cut across the reentrants. Neither of us gain on the choice. Through the green leaving 12, Postica again shows that he's the better man at thick stuff, but climbing 13 I notice that I seem to have the edge going up. Since both of those elements will be major factors the rest of the way, it's probably going to come down to who stays clean (as it usually does). Bakken is still out of sight, but I'm pretty sure he's not more than one mistake ahead of us.

Postica heads straight west to the ridgeline from 13, while I take the direct route through the reentrants. We arrive at 14 together again. He stays high, apparently wanting to take the trail along the ridge to 15. Clearly, he's favoring trail routes so this might be a good time to split. The woods look pretty open, so I head down into the valley, figuring the running along the stream should be OK. It is quite fast going and when I get to 15, the Moldovan is nowhere in sight. Since my approach had me looking right at the control site for a good two minutes, I'm sure I would have seen him if his route had paid off. I head west to the trail and then turn right, committing to the skip of 16. I'm now completely on my own - execution will determine the day.

With that in mind, I run the trail hard, but take care upon hitting the bend that I go down the right spur to 17. Similar caution is used picking the spur down to 18 (although there really wasn't much chance of missing that one).

The obvious route to 19 is to run the wide contour along the hillside. We have a similar feature at West Tyson in St. Louis that we refer to as the "highway". While it is naturally occurring, the ledge looks a lot like a road carved into the hillside. While the ledge is much easier to run on than the steep slope above or below, the problem is that deadfall tends to slide down the hill and collect on the ledge. This turns out to be the case here as well and the first few hundred meters are chocked enough that I have to run around on the low side. The second half of the leg is much faster and the ledge does lead right into the control.

Contouring along the other side of the ridge to 20 is more difficult as the vegetation is thicker and there's no ledge, but I'm so close to the finish, I don't mind pushing. 21 is higher up the hillside than the map indicates and with no reason to save the legs, I decide to just push right over the top to 23 (skipping 22) rather than run around on the trail.

I previous Trots, there's always been a lot of buzz at the finish when I come in. Usually a few people will shout "Go Eric!" and maybe somebody has a camera out. As I run across the field to 23, I notice that the finish area seems positively serene. Nobody even seems to notice me. Could it be that I'm not expected yet? Could I actually be the first person in? I punch 23 and run into the finish chute. Mike Shiffman looks up and says, "First finisher." In a voice so calm that it's almost surreal. I'm ready to explode. I've won the Trot. I want to jump. I want to yell. I realize that there's no reason I can't do those things so I jump and yell for a bit.

Bakken arrives six and a half minutes later having boomed 17 badly. Postica arrives another six minutes after that. I'm not sure if he missed the skip business in translation or just decided he wanted to get them all, but he didn't skip. He looks pretty tired (this is a long race for a teenager) but he must have kept a decent pace going. The late skips were worth between 11 and 12 minutes (see analysis below) so he didn't lose much, if any, time from 15 in. Curtis arrives in fourth and Eglinski gets fifth which keeps it close but, sorry Mike, I'll be wearing that #1 bib next year as Lifetime Trot Leader (assuming Dick does bring back the bib numbers). My day could not have been made any brighter. Well, maybe the Giants could have won, but at least I enjoyed the game while eating pizza and drinking beer at the Eglinski-Jones household. Shafer-Skelton takes top female honors, so it was a very good day for St. Louis.

On the injury front, I come through basically unscathed. My lungs gave me no trouble and, while I certainly have the usual assortment of cuts and bruises from KC vegetation, it's all superficial. Bakken's thigh looks quite a mess from his encounter with the fence, but he's current on his tetanus shot and doesn't seem too worked up about it. Platt was dealt the worst blow of the day. His legs completely seized up on him and he abandoned after 4. It's a condition he's experienced before following a lot of time in the car; seems the drive from Wyoming didn't agree with him this year.

And, now it's time for...

Eric's Absurdly Detailed Skip Analysis

With double skips forbidden and the most obvious skip coming late (22), the skip problem was much simpler than usual. (Or was it? Read on.) Basically it came down to whether you wanted an early or late skip. As always, times are based on the speeds of the lead pack.

4: The first good skip and better than the map indicates because the stream crossing between 3 and 4 was non-trivial. Nobody in the top 10 took this. From 3, head east to the powerline and then down to the water stop. This is about 200m of open woods running shorter than 4-5 (call it 90 seconds), plus you save all of 3-4 (6:58 for me, but I think it was a pokey leg - Bakken was more like 6:30). Total savings 8:00.

5: I'm not sure why I missed this completely. It's a good skip, I just didn't consider it. Perhaps the problem is that you have to look left of the line whereas the presence of 5 makes you want to look to the right. Anyway, you've got 200m of light green to get to the trail, an undulating 700m on good trail, and then another 200m of light green to the control. Eglinski was the top placer to take this and did 4-6 in 10:46. He wasn't running as well as usual this year, so it probably would have been under 10 with better legs. 4-5-6 was 18:51 for me, but that includes the Bakken fence episode and a minute lost attacking the control. Probably should have been around 17:30. Savings is at least 7:00, maybe as much as 8:00.

6: Not obvious, and not as good as the other early skips, but I almost took this just because it does cut out a trip over a pretty big ridge. 5-7 is 200m open downhill, 500m road and then 400m up the stream. Around 7:30-8:00 if run well. 5-6-7 was 16:58 for me, but requires the same adjustments as above so the savings is 7:30-8:00.

16: Doesn't save much distance, but it does eliminate a bunch of climb and takes a trail through some of the nastiest vegetation on the course. 15-17 was 6:10 for me. Bakken boomed 17 and Curtis appears to have missed taking his split at 17. We do have data to support 15-16 as a 5:15 leg. 16-17 is a tough 700m leg with plenty of climb and green; seems like it would be at least 7 minutes so let's go with 12:30 for 15-16-17. Total savings: 6:20.

20: The most common skip after 22. Cuts off about 600m, but no climb. I was 8:31 for 19-20-21. Curtis did 19-21 in 2:10 for a savings of 6:20.

22: The most obvious and taken by pretty much everybody. Not only does it save the most distance, it's a late skip which is always nice to have if you happen to catch (or get caught by) somebody who's used theirs up. However, it's objectively the worst skip of the bunch! The only person in the top 10 to run 21-22-23 was Postica, who didn't post splits, so it's a bit of a guess as to how much it saves, but the short answer is: not as much as you'd think. 21-22 is a lot like 21-23 with a 300m trail run stuck in the middle. 22-23 is 600m, but it's flat and almost entirely on trail. So, the difference is roughly 1K of flat trail or around 5 minutes. Shiffman must be laughing to himself: "suckers!"

So, from a purely objective standpoint, the early skips were the way to go. Since doubles were prohibited, you'd skip 4 and 6 for 15-16 minutes saved. (If doubles were permitted, the 4-5 combo gives even bigger gains: 3-4-5-6 was 24 minutes, 3-6 is a 5-minute trail run.) That needs to be weighed against the risk of skipping early and then getting caught by the pack. However, given the large gains from each skip, it would take quite a goof to let the pack catch back up. I think this is one case where the early skips really made a lot of sense.