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Golden Gate Park

Date: (Sun.) Jun. 20, 2010
Location: San Francisco, CA
Event Director: - 530.214.6168
Course Setters: Deron van Hoff, Scott Novotny
Type: C; White, Yellow, Orange, and Long Orange courses; demonstration Trail-O controls


In the interest of getting this event onto the BAOC schedule, I was originally listed as the Event Director as well as Course Setter. I did spend some hours going through the park with Deron van Hoff, reviewing the 2008 event, and discussing mapping options with Bob Cooley. However, the Course Setter's credits should go to Deron van Hoff. This was merely a learning experience for me. We expect some intriguing opportunities with this year's event. Dwight Freund will provide some demo Trail-O controls, and the event's courses should contain a little something for everyone.

Scott Novotny
Event Director


Course Setter's Notes

By

I hope to see a good turnout for the annual Golden Gate Park event. We will be using a new assembly, Start, and Finish area this year — at Bunny Meadows on the east end of the park, so this will give a fresh look to the courses. White, Yellow, Orange, and Long Orange courses will be offered. Picnic-plate controls will be used to mark the control locations, and you will need to mark a multiple-choice score card (i.e., E-punch will not be used).

Because of my personal preference of "getting my money's worth", I suppose the Orange and Long Orange courses are a bit long, but I hope everyone can find a suitable choice among the four courses. I hope to see some of our Blue- and Red-course runners, and the adventure racers, take advantage of a nice Long Orange course. In a pre-run of the Long Orange, I took 98 minutes. I expect our best will be able to finish in the 75-minute range. If you're interested in walking the Long Orange course, I would expect you should plan on 3+ hours. Courses will close at 2:00 PM, so you should have enough time if you start early.

The White, Yellow, and Orange courses are entirely on the eastern end of the park, where most of the visitors, activities, and museums are. It should be fun!! You will be co-mingling with many other Sunday park users, including runners, bicyclists, roller skaters, skateboarders, swing dancers, fine arts aficionados, and science geeks. The eastern end of JFK Drive (near the assembly area) is closed to vehicle traffic on Sundays. As always, look both ways before crossing streets.

The Long Orange course crosses U.S. Highway 1 (aka 19th Avenue, Crossover Drive, Park Presidio). Primarily for safety, but also for fairness in competition, this thoroughfare can be crossed only at marked pedestrian crossing points. Cross hatching is shown on the map where the thoroughfare is deemed to be unsafe to cross. Please cross the roadway only where allowed, even if you see an opening in the traffic. The crossing points are at the far north boundary of the park at Fulton Street, the far south boundary of the park at Lincoln Way, and the two main east-west streets through the park — JFK Drive in the northern part and MLK Jr Drive in the southern part. With the exception of JFK Drive, which is an undercrossing under Highway 1, the other three crossings are at signalized intersections. You may have to wait up to about 1 minute for the right of way at these intersections. Do not cross when the light is red!

As for the course setting, I opted to focus on providing route-choice options, and an advantage to those making quick decisions. Many, but not all, controls are at locations that don't require fine orienteering skills. The park doesn't lend itself too well to this skill, and I found the vegetation boundaries to be imperfect enough to not want to put the controls on subtle features. There are many controls out there (53), and some of them are on similar features, so make sure you check control plate numbers before marking your answer.

The course statistics are as follows: 

   Course          Length    Climb   Controls   Map Scale

   White           2.4 km     20 m      19       1:5,000
   Yellow          3.1 km     30 m      15       1:5,000
   Orange          5.7 km    180 m      15       1:8,000
   Long Orange    11.1 km    310 m      28       1:8,000

Note: We will not be putting water out on the courses. All the courses pass several drinking fountains, which are shown on the map as a blue ×. People who expect to be on their course for a long time (e.g., the Long Orange course) may want to carry their own water.

Hope you all have a good time!


Comments on Statistics

Based on previous events at Golden gate, the GV/km for this park is about 670. That makes the predicted GV for Long Orange = 11 * 670 = ~7400.1

With a power rating of 90, Deron would be expected to complete this course in approx 7400/90 = 82 minutes, which is faster than he actually reports.

There are two possible explanations:

  1. Deron was not running full speed.
  2. The course is actually more interesting and challenging than usual (at this park).

I hope for the second! In that case, the GV of the Long Orange course will be 90(Deron's Power)*98 = 8800, which is quite a Blue'ish course.

The predicted GV of the Orange course is ~ 4000, which is around the upper boundary for Orange, in agreement with Scott.

Find your Power here (http://leshij.org/O-web/php/report_class_list_BAOC.php?dataSource=Scores_CURRENT&GO_BTN=Show+Results), and then estimate your running time in minutes by dividing the GV of the course by your Power.

Enjoy,

Shura
(Unofficial) BAOC Statistician

1 "GV" = Gnarliness Value, a standardized measure of the difficulty of the course