Urban Goat II, plus Dinner and a Movie
Date: (Sat.) Aug. 5, 2006
Location: Oakland, CA
Event Director: 
- 510.681.6181
Course Setter: Rex Winterbottom
Type: C; Short "Goat" course
Course Setter's Notes
By Rex Winterbottom
Welcome to the second annual "Urban Goat" — a 3km or 5km quest visting curvy streets, grandiose palaces — houses, restaurants, and movie theaters, mysterious staircases and footpaths, all with the excitement of "pack running" and following. The mass start time is 7:00 PM sharp, with a briefing at 6:55 PM on the maps, which you may look at when they are distributed. Dinner and movie afterwards are optional! The meeting area is my flat at 4648 Park Blvd, same as Friday night. Registration will be open at 6:00 P.M., briefing at 6:55 P.M., mass start at 7:00 P.M., finish near Rolling Dunes, and then the movie for any interested.
Terrain
Urban residences and streets, with some urban parks and trails. Many staircases and paths between streets. A few busy streets. Lovely gardens. Quirky looking houses, and a few palatial mansions. Undulating hills.
Map
A 1:10000 scale, 20-foot contour selection from a huge color OCAD master map. Very accurate, although some staircase entries are hard to see immediately, and require careful scanning of the landscape. Also, some staircases in the areas of the courses have fences, because they are in disrepair and overgrown. Fenced-off staircases are marked on the map. One staircase that is not fenced off (but was) is marked out of bounds, because it has deteriorated wooden steps that could fail underneath your feet.
Hazards
Traffic. The old adage "look both ways before crossing the street" applies here! I would like to add "don't read your map while crossing the street." Use all your senses. Safety first. Neither course crosses Park Blvd., although both cross busy intersections along Park Blvd, the major thoroughfare on the map that is the only street with a thin divider line marked on the map. The rest of the streets have light traffic and low 15 or 25 MPH speed limits, but watch out for the odd careless driver. I kid you not, I saw a driver yesterday on her cell phone and flossing her teeth at the same time, while driving! But that was in another neighborhood.
Take care not to endanger other pedestrians and four-legged friends.
Courses
Comments for both the Urban Goat and Kid Urban Goat: You might think streets are easy, but watch out for those "high stakes" route choices... one wrong move and you'll be sorry you committed so easily to the longer or steeper way. No control bags — uses the Q&A format. All the controls are street signs. Since there aren't control bags to tell you that you are there, make sure you know where you are on the map! You could get an answer wrong if you're not careful... At each of those controls, write on your answer sheet the smallest street number from the street sign OR make an acronym from the first letters of each word on the sign. Acronym example: Evans Circle & Percy Ave. would make "PACE" or "CAPE" on your answer sheet, but not "CAKE"!
Kid Urban Goat
- 3.3 km, 120 m climb, 3 controls
Simply go from 1 to 2 to 3 to the finish. Disregard controls w3, w4, w5, w6, w7, w8, and w9.
Urban Goat
- 5.2 km, 230 m climb, 9 controls
Go from 1 to 2. Before going to 3, choose any 6 controls from w3, w4, w5, w6, w7, w8, w9 as you would in a Score-O. You may omit one, say w3. When I test ran the course with my clipboard, writing down street sign information (and with dead legs after running 15 miles the previous day) I did not omit any so I did a total of 10 controls and finished with a time of 51:10. After getting 6 out of 7 "w" controls, proceed to 3 and then the finish.
Rex Winterbottom