Pt. Pinole
Sprint Champs
Richmond
Sunday, Feb. 25, 2001
Contact: Steve Gregg,
510-531-6697
For the third consecutive year, the BAOC Sprint Championships will be
held at Point Pinole, using the same "Prologue and Chase" format as
last year with e-punching.
Not into the Sprints? We'll also have normal White, Yellow, and perhaps a "long Yellow" course with
standard manual punching.
We have had a run of bad weather for my Point Pinole meets the last few
years, but I'm confident that trend will come to an end this year! This
particular event format is much more fun for everyone if a lot of people
attend, so even if the weather forecast is unappealing, plan to get out of
bed and run!
As usual, I am looking for volunteers to help during
the event. Robert Lewis will soon start looking for people to man the
E-punch system, so if you want to help out on that end, please let
Robert know.
Sprint Champs
The terrain at Point Pinole is extremely fast, mostly open, and the
navigation rarely ventures beyond Orange level difficulty. Thus the event
will be designed to test your ability to run hard between controls with
minimal hesitation and to get in and out of the controls quickly. Electronic
punching will be used on the Prologue and Chase courses, so expect the
courses to loop back on themselves. There also will be a map exchange halfway
through the Chase.
The Prologue will have first-come, first-served starting times just like a regular
event. However, if you wish to participate in the Chase that follows, you need to be sure you
arrive early enough to finish your run by 11:30 or so, since your starting
time for the Chase will be 12:00, plus the amount of time it took you to
complete the Prologue. In the Chase,
following is specifically allowed, and the winners of the event will be the
first people to cross the finish line at the end of the Chase.
The stats:
- Prologue - 3.6 km, 8 controls, 30 m climb, predicted winning time
17 minutes (Not a misprint: it took me 20 minutes to test-run, and I'm feeling
slow these days. This part is super-fast!)
- Chase Map #1 - 2.6 km, 9 controls, 45 m climb, predicted time 15 minutes
to the halfway point (my test run time was 17:30)
- Chase Map #2 - 2.9 km, 7 controls, 40 m climb, predicted time also 15
minutes on the second half (my test run time was 17:30 here too)
I'm predicting a winning time of 30 minutes or less for the entire 5.5 km
Chase. Of course, this assumes that James or Dan S. or both will show up in
decent shape and run hard. (James ran 4.7 min/km on a course in similar
terrain a couple of years ago, as I recall, so maybe 30 minutes is too slow
of an estimate - we'll see.)
The courses are all streamered, so anyone who can't attend the event and wants
some good training runs can go out there and vet for me. Let me know and I'll
get you the maps.
Directions
To get to Point Pinole, take the Richmond Parkway exit off Interstate 80
in Richmond and go west about 1.5 miles. Immediately after the stoplight at
San Pablo Avenue, turn right onto Atlas Road. After about a mile on Atlas
you will reach a stop sign, where you will turn left onto Giant Highway. The
park entrance is immediately after the detention center on the right in about
another half-mile. Park and walk over the railroad tracks to the staging
area in the meadow.