In recent years, the event has changed a bit; catering to the Adventure Racer side of the club. It's not easy to articulate the difference between AR "Trekking" and true "Orienteering", but anybody with more than superficial experience in both understands the distinction. It's not that one is harder or more worthy than the other, it's more a matter of structure. Orienteering has very specific rules regarding technical correctness. Adventure Racing, you take what comes. If you approach the latter with the mindset of the former, you will NOT enjoy the event. If you take a chill pill first, it's all good.
This year's version starts and finishes at Raging Rivers. It's a lidar-trail map in Illinois, upriver from Alton. By lidar-trail, I'm referring to the genre of maps which grab publicly available lidar elevation data, add trails and other super-obvious features, and call that good enough. While such mapping shortcuts throw the orienteering crowd into apoplectic fits, they are actually quite sufficient for navigation. What they are not good enough for is making good route choices, since vegetation density is not indicated. Fortunately, I've run these nasty, overgrown woods before and know that ANY trail route is better than ANY woods route.
The field is a bit lean this year. The nice weather has all the locals out, but there's only one big entry from out of town: Andrei Karpoff, who is going as a team with local Scott Erlandson (who goes by Erl). These two are the real deal, especially on an adventure-race-type map. Erl recently took home bronze in US Adventure Race National Championships (teamed with Emily Korsch, who is running solo today, and Justin Bakken). Andrei is also an excellent adventure racer and has handed me a defeat in some longer orienteering events, such as the Possum Trot. So, this will be no cakewalk.
The format is a mark-on-the-clock three hour score-O. At the gun, I run a firm pace over to the map boards so I have the luxury of sitting down with a map right in front of me rather than having to mark peering over someone else's shoulder. Past experience has shown that this is a bad time to rush. I take my time, making sure all the circles are in the right spot before heading out.
Controls 1-9 are 10 points each, 10-18 are 20, 20-24 are 30. For reasons not given, there's no control 19. While I expect to sweep the course, I follow the herd heading east from the start to make sure I get all the high-point controls. Many go straight up the ridge to 8. I decide to hit 4 and 7 first so I'll have a straight shot back to 6 on the return.
At 7, I get to the control location, which is pretty open by the standards of these woods, but still can't see the control anywhere. I'm almost to the point of giving up on it when I spot it lying on the ground in the reentrant. Orienteering: protest, course gets thrown out. Adventure racing: I put it on top of the log it was hung from so others will be able to see it.
At 7, I get to the control location, which is pretty open by the standards of these woods, but still can't see the control anywhere. I'm almost to the point of giving up on it when I spot it lying on the ground in the reentrant. Orienteering: protest, course gets thrown out. Adventure racing: I put it on top of the log it was hung from so others will be able to see it.
I pass Erl and Andrei on the way to 12. We meet up again at 13 and stay together through the long, very slow descent off the ridge. The woods are crazy thick here and I'm glad I'm with them or I'd be stressing over how much time I was losing. Since I'm keeping up with two of the best bushwackers in the country, I conclude that the woods are just crazy thick and there's nothing wrong with my pace.
The eastern loop is fun with its mix of, well, I can't call it "urban" but let's go with "small town" navigation and woods. Erl and Andrei skip 15, so they get a bit ahead of me. Emily, who has skipped 7, is also slightly up the road. We blast through 17, 16, 18, and 22, then start taking navigation a bit more seriously. The rockface between 23 and 24 is crossable, but not without risk. I take it cautiously and am starting to lose contact with the lead three who are apparently still young enough to believe they are impervious to injury.
I push to 21, missing the trail in the process. Apparently, my route through the woods isn't much worse because, once I do get on the trail, Emily is right in front of me. We hit 21 together. Leaving 21, I comment to her that there's no good attackpoint for 20. She agrees.
As I have no confidence in my attack from the top of the ridge, I figure I'll just take my best guess at which of the many spurs to descend and sort it out at the bottom if I'm wrong. At the bottom, it's obvious from the other reentrants coming together that I had actually descended the correct spur, but the control was not there. Emily is still with me. We look to the north where the visibility is better and see no control, so we start hunting south. Two spurs later, I'm starting to think that there's no way it could be off this much. I'm within seconds of turning around to head north when I spot the flag two more spurs over (the arrow on the map indicates the actual location). Another common ethos in Adventure Racing is that when a control is misplaced, competitors become allies and work together finding it. I call out that I've got it, but that turns out to be unnecessary. Emily has also spotted it, as have Andrei and Erl, who had been searching further up the hill. We all converge on the bag at about the same time.
I push to 21, missing the trail in the process. Apparently, my route through the woods isn't much worse because, once I do get on the trail, Emily is right in front of me. We hit 21 together. Leaving 21, I comment to her that there's no good attackpoint for 20. She agrees.
As I have no confidence in my attack from the top of the ridge, I figure I'll just take my best guess at which of the many spurs to descend and sort it out at the bottom if I'm wrong. At the bottom, it's obvious from the other reentrants coming together that I had actually descended the correct spur, but the control was not there. Emily is still with me. We look to the north where the visibility is better and see no control, so we start hunting south. Two spurs later, I'm starting to think that there's no way it could be off this much. I'm within seconds of turning around to head north when I spot the flag two more spurs over (the arrow on the map indicates the actual location). Another common ethos in Adventure Racing is that when a control is misplaced, competitors become allies and work together finding it. I call out that I've got it, but that turns out to be unnecessary. Emily has also spotted it, as have Andrei and Erl, who had been searching further up the hill. We all converge on the bag at about the same time.
The other three stay low, but I decide to get to the trail as quickly as possible to get out of the thick woods. This doesn't save any time as the woods get thicker near the top of the ridge. The last 20 meters to the trail are literally crawling on hands and knees. Once on the trail, it's very quick running down to 14. Erl and Andrei are about 30 seconds ahead heading south to get 15 and setting up a return on the road along the river. Emily is not in sight so I assume she's behind me. I head north for the long trail run to 6. The split has been made and the win will come down to executing these last few controls solo.
As I climb the ridge, my legs are reminding me that I ran 100 miles just two weeks ago. Still, they respond to prodding and, once on top of the ridge, I make great time to 6. Running the trail out of 6, I get in my obligatory fall as I get tripped up trying to jump over some storm debris. I go down pretty hard, but only my hand sustains an injury (and a minor one at that). I take a conservative route to 5 and hit it cleanly.
Leaving 5, I notice that the tail I was intending to take to 10 is actually marked as out of bounds. That's not a particularly pleasant revelation as it means I need to traverse the 500 meters over to 10. As this is the last stretch of thick woods I have to deal with, I'm able to stay focused and make pretty good time though it probably would have been faster to go back through 2 and run the field. At 10, I meet Erl and Andrei again, coming the other way. They head downhill towards 3. If they only have 3, 2, and 5 to go, this is going to be very, very close.
I'm too tired to push through thick woods and any navigation error now would be disastrous. Fortunately, the trail routes are fast, simple, and not much extra distance so I can run them full speed and still hit 11 and 3 cleanly. Heading towards 2, I pass Emily who's on her way up to 3. Erl and Andrei will have to cross in front of me to get to the finish. I don't see them pass and I can't believe they are more than a minute or two ahead of me, so it looks like I'm leading. Problem is, I squander a few seconds locating 2 and, once I've found it, I have to crawl through some vegetation to get to it. I'm in a complete panic as I crawl back out; having them come by at this point would be too much to bear. I emerge from the woods and see nobody in front, so I hit the gas for the line.
Turns out, they hadn't got 6 yet, so I actually beat them by a few minutes to take the overall win in two hours, four minutes (somebody probably wrote seconds down somewhere but, again, this is Adventure Racing and we don't need to concern ourselves with digits that don't matter). Emily comes in a few minutes after them to take the women's prize. The course setter, Jerry Young, apologizes that the course was a bit short. I respond that my legs were more than happy to stop.
The misplaced control and the unmapped thick woods would have ruined a "true" orienteering event. However, this race was just a whole lot of fun. I went into it with a relaxed attitude and really enjoyed not only the fast sections, but dealing with the vegetation as it came. In truth, I think Jerry did a pretty good job of keeping us out of the worst of it. And, oscillating between pushing through the woods and blasting the trails was pretty much the only way I could have run competitively on just two weeks recovery from Tunnel Hill. On a more open course (or one closer to the full three hours), I would simply not have been able to maintain a decent pace.
The event has definitely changed over the past 20 years, but not for the worse. Local turnout was excellent and the mood at the finish was buoyant. Veterans and newbies alike returned with smiles. There was a time, not long ago, when I would have decried the fact that having fun was taking precedence over rigorous competition. I'm pretty much over that one.
The event has definitely changed over the past 20 years, but not for the worse. Local turnout was excellent and the mood at the finish was buoyant. Veterans and newbies alike returned with smiles. There was a time, not long ago, when I would have decried the fact that having fun was taking precedence over rigorous competition. I'm pretty much over that one.
Sounds like lots of excitement for a 2+ hour race. Glad the Turkey-O continues to present a great race. Congrats on keeping it together for the win. Thanks for the report.
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