Discussion: Daze 4 - One Cowboy Relay

Probably the best One Cowboy Relay ever. We will call it a success at any rate.

Initial post-race analysis has been completed. What was it that separated this year's One Cowboy Relay from previous attempts? Some things were essentially the same: outstanding terrain, high quality maps, course design leading to race mayhem in the multiple loops area, stellar results service, and prizes beyond compare. The weather was exceptional, but of course that is merely what is expected of late summer weather in the Laramie Range. There was spectating and cheering by a group of mountain bikers that swung by the race area 3 different times (and actually rode away *through* the race area on a cattle trail just to satiate their curiosity), but while that was nice, success or failure does not depend on mountain biking. There was a flock of turkeys--a race first--but the turkeys showed up apres race, dining al fresco on some nearby legumes, so it couldn't have been the turkeys.

In the end it seems to have come down to--of all things--the selection of the control description at the final control. Most course setters would have gone for the more obvious description of one of several available boulders or else stony ground. However, in a flash of brilliance that is the sort said to delineate genius from rote expertise, the control was instead described as the copse, north edge.

The map and controls from today's race:

From publiken

The first 4 loops visited the controls NW of the start/finish, while the 5th and final common loop went to the controls south of the start/finish.

The mountain bikers are not shown here.

Official Results, One Cowboy Relay (Daze 4): Conditions again warm and sunny, about 10F warmer than normal, blue skies with pods of circling vultures, little breeze. Valuable(???) crystal prizes to the first 20 finishers, regardless of whether they had or hadn't consumed beer the night before.

Graham Baird led out the last loop but missed on the first control, which was all that Sergei needed to sneak on by through the distinctly unjungle-like sage in the control vicinity.

JP Lande has been doing much better this week than anyone can remember him ever doing before, and there are several theories going around about this. The leading hypothesis is that with fewer letters in his last name than he used to have, he is very naturally running more freely and faster. It's like losing weight. But when we ask JP himself, he just keeps whispering something about Norwegian Wood, Norwegian Wood, man. Who knows what they're cultivating around the Peak-to-Peak Highway these days.

Quite late in the lead-up to Laramie Daze email arrived from Carol Ross, wondering if she and Greg Walker could still participate in several Daze as guest runners, and that they would be happy to pay up to $70 US per day purely to establish the fact that they weren't cheapskates. We wrote them back telling them to please do come, but that if they tried to pay as much as $70 US per day per person as guest runners that we would not let them go out, not even if they adopted convincing race attitudes complete with sneers and snicketies, but that if they paid the regular fee then they could be regular runners and could compete for accolades and valuable race prices just like everyone else. In truth, I think we could have charged them $100 US per day just for the clean Wyoming air (they had been breathing forest fire fumes for the past 3 weeks back at home), but we didn't. I guess that makes us El Stupidos.

1 Sergei Zhyk 36.48
2 Graham Baird 38.19
3 JP Lande 38.39
4 Greg Walker 44.15
5 Greg Balter 44.43
6 Troy Bozarth 48.12
7 Pete Curtis 52.58
8 Eugene Mlynczyk 53.01
9 Ron Birks 53.26
10 Carol Ross 53.38
11 Charlie Shahbazian 54.01
12 Ludwig Hill 54.51
13 Dennis Carney 59.27
14 Sue Kuestner 59.31
15 Joel Swisher 59.33
16 Doug Berling 59.35
17 John Crowther 59.41
18 Gavin Wyatt-Mair 62.56
19 Sam Listwak 63.16
20 Mark Parsons 63.43
21 Kris Beecroft 68.01
22 Ralph Lindzen 71.15
23 Jim Hall 71.46
24 John Murray 81.55
25 Brooke Mann 82.13
26 Paul Clatterbuck 83.11
27 Steve Dornseif 83.33
28 Scott Drumm 83.37
29 Dmitriy Zamoshchin 85.48
30 Ardis Dull 86.01
31 Eric Concannon 89.29
32 Troy Couture 99.21
33 Valentina Shcherbinina 100.13
34 Sheryl Lehman 100.55
35 Kean Williams 111.19
36 Linda Moore 112.18
37 Shirley Donald 131.12
38 Carl Moore 133.12
39 Scott Donald DNF
40 Peg Davis DNF
41 Amy Winston found her iPhone

Thanks Swampfox for not listing me as DNF:)

Norwegian Wood? With all the rain we have had lately in the Peak to Peak region, the mushrooms of all kinds have been abundant.

Again, the course is available on RouteGadget. Remember to select "All classes".

I was playing that song last night at the campfire, is that what it's all about?

Needed to look up where Fustest with the Mostest came from. Learned quite a bit, though still not sure how a real cowboy (and perhaps Nathan Bedford Forrest was one of the last read cowboys out there) would pronounce such a phrase.

From what I can tell, he was quite well read, not a hick at all, and what he actually said was probably "Get there first with the most men", whch is why the initial edition of this map is called "First with the Most". But legends die hard.

Especially if he was quite well read, and not a hick at all, I am more likely to believe the legend.

"The Boss knew all about the so-called fallacy of the argumentum ad hominem. “It may be a fallacy,” he said, “but it is shore-God useful. If you use the right kind of argumentum you can always scare the hominem into a laundry bill he didn’t expect."

These map names are meant to (mostly) be in fun only. Why be boring?

I personally don't think there is as much as even a one in a million chance Forrest ever uttered that phrase, or a phrase passably near to that, whether transcribed from a Southern dialect or not. But who knows.

No objection to the current name, just explaining why it was different in the earlier edition, and addressing Ross's question about how Forrest would have pronnounced it. But from (the perhaps dubious) Wikipedia (although this part cites references):

Forrest is often erroneously quoted as saying his strategy was to "git thar fustest with the mostest." Now often recast as "Getting there firstest with the mostest," this misquote first appeared in print in a New York Tribune article written to provide colorful comments in reaction to European interest in Civil War generals. The aphorism was addressed and corrected by a New York Times story in 1918 to be: "Ma'am, I got there first with the most men." Though a novel and succinct condensation of the military's Principles of mass and maneuver, Bruce Catton writes: "Do not, under any circumstances whatever, quote Forrest as saying 'fustest' and 'mostest'. He did not say it that way, and nobody who knows anything about him imagines that he did."

While I have to respect Swampfox's "one in a million" estimate, unless Catton interviewed soldiers who served under Forrest, I'm still skeptical for two reasons. One, organizations, particularly military organizations, are known to have strange customs and vocabulary. And second, I don't see "Fustest with the Mostest" as being ignorant, I see it as being *funny*.

I am impressed by an event where the controversy is centred on the name of the map.

I just saw it as Yankee intellectuals trying to badmouth a Confederate. But if in the end that backfired and his supporters adopt the dialect version with pride, so be it.