Mike, Mary, Dan, Fritz and Bobbi competed in the St. Louis Forest Park meet on Sunday July 16. The weather was warm, but not humid, which was a nice break from the usual conditions. Also unusual were the courses, designed by Fritz. There were three loops, with map exchanges. The 2.5K course covered one loop; the 5K covered two loops, and the 10K course covered all three loops. (So, everyone ran the 2.5K loop.) There were 31 controls all together. I liked having many controls in a short distance; it made the meet much more interesting. It's impossible to set difficult courses in Forest Park, and previously no one had succeeded in setting interesting courses. Thank you Fritz!

-- Mary (maprunner@juno.com), July 17, 2000

Answers

OK took first place on the long course in both the men's and women's categories. Bobbi was the top woman and Dan was the top man.

-- Michael (meglin@juno.com), July 17, 2000.

You are welcome, Mary. I enjoyed course setting 'at a distance', although Bobbi had to put up with my rantings about how markers or clues weren't as I had intended. But I guess it was good enough. I tried to set for many route choices and as I jogged the course, it seemed I achieved that goal.

A serendipitous control was inspired by Mook, who asked for a jungle gym control. I used playground equipment and Yvonne let me know there was possibly one piece of equipment that people could climb (the slide was small enough that a child at the top was only 6 feet above the ground). All the equipment was mapped in an east-west line. The clue read 'western man-made object, inside', but the object was on the eastern edge of the line. However, the object was a stagecoach looking device that had monkey bars across the top. Only Mike got the unintended pun... for the stagecoach was a 'western' man-made object.

Oh, I do so love trap o'.

-- Fritz (fpmenninger@hotmail.com), July 19, 2000.