2014 Golden Goat, Golden Kid, & Golden Pygmy Goat
Morgan Territory Regional Preserve
Date: (Sun.) Nov. 2, 2014
Location: Livermore, CA
Event Directors: 
- 209.928.4771, - 209.928.4771
Course Setter: Martin Kunz
Type: Extra long courses, and a beginner-friendly course, all with mass starts.
Course Setter's Notes
By Martin Kunz
This year's Golden Goat and Kid return to Morgan Territory, arguably one of the most attractive orienteering areas in the SF Bay Area, and definitely one of my favorite maps. They bring along a Pygmy Goat designed as a beginner-friendly Goat Experience. The Pygmy Goat offers the opportunity for a hard run with less challenging navigation and terrain.
For those new to this: The Golden Goat is a long distance individual orienteering event with mass start. Running in a pack while staying on the map requires some special skills, only rarely practiced, e.g., in relays. Staying alert on the map rather than just blindly following the pack is required, because the courses contain little special treats such as forked controls, butterflies, etc., which tend to split up the pack. Be prepared for lots of off-trail running, mostly through beautiful golden grass and open oak chaparral. This is some of the finest running I have ever done—and this is not self-accolade by an unabashed course setter, but simply a characteristic of the terrain.
The Goat and Kid courses have a first part with long legs in coarsely structured terrain requiring smart route choice decisions to avoid too much climb. The final two thirds, or so, are then more technical in the sense of fine navigation. Both courses have a "butterfly" loop as well as an open fork. An open fork is a split control, where both controls are given on the map, and runners are free to choose whatever they think is the fastest option.
There are occasional cows and bulls out there, but they are friendly and mellow. There is also patchy poison oak. I myself am rather sensitive to it, and stumbled through quite some of it in the past months without getting any symptoms. It's possible that the one and only positive side-effect of the California drought is that poison oak is too dry to be aggressive.
Remember that there's a mass start for the Goat and Kid courses at 10:00 AM, and at 10:15 for the Pygmy Goat course. You can start later, up to 11:00, but you would miss the fun!
Notes:
- The Goat Weekend coincides with the end of Daylight Saving Time. Remember to change your alarm clocks ("fall back"), and you’ll get an extra hour of sleep to rest up before your run.
- There is a 10–minute walk to the Start for the Goat and Kid courses.
- Announcements, instructions, and explanations will be given at the Goat/Kid Start at 9:50 AM.
- The Pygmy course starts near the Registration area.
Approximate course statistics:
- Golden Goat: 12.6 km, 650 m climb, 26 controls
- Golden Kid: 7.8 km, 450 m climb, 16 controls
- Pygmy Goat: 4.8 km, 125 m climb, 14 controls
As usual, those course lengths represent the cumulative straight-line distances between controls. You will definitely cover "somewhat" more distance. The climb numbers represent the amount of ascending that would be done on the "optimum route" (in the Course Setter's opinion), without regard for any descending.