2017 California Orienteering Week (COW)
2017 California Orienteering Week (COW)

O in the Oaks 2017 – Day 1

Point Pinole Regional Shoreline

Date: (Sat.) Mar. 25, 2017
Location: Richmond, CA
Event Director: - 510.684.2001
Course Setter: Holly Gaston
Type: A; "Extended" Middle courses — both competitive National Event and recreational courses

Related Event Information

PDF File With These Notes O in the Oaks 2017 Overview O in the Oaks 2017 Day-1 Info

2016 Point Pinole Event


Course Setter's Notes

By Holly Gaston

The Map

Unlike most Bay Area parks, Point Pinole Regional Shoreline is relatively flat and runnable. It juts into the San Francisco Bay, and offers sweeping views of the water and the opposing shoreline.

Point Pinole also has a grittier side. You'll likely hear gunshots from the neighboring shooting range, and as you run through the park, you'll encounter a number of overgrown ruins. These are the remains of the park's former use: a dynamite-manufacturing plant. The ruins are blended into a mix of eucalyptus forest, grassland with scattered shrubs, and marshes.

The map scale is 1:7500 and the contour interval is 2.5 meters.

Water Features

California's drought finally ended this year, which means there is a lot more water in the park than usual. Expect seasonal marshes to be very full and low-lying areas in general to be very wet. Ditches and depressions are likely to have water in them. I have added some new seasonal marshes to the map, but be ready for more water than shown.

Poison Oak

The poison oak has appreciated all of this water, and it is out in force. We moved controls that turned out to be in the middle of poison oak patches once the leaves started showing, but you will likely encounter it between controls. It often appears in the "white" forest and is typically not mapped, except in occasional places where it is very thick.

Fallen Trees

Recent storms have knocked down a number of large eucalyptus trees. Some of them are shown on the map as new rootstocks, but you may encounter a recently fallen tree that is not on the map. The park also cut down several patches of eucalyptus trees this year. These patches are marked with green slash to indicate that running is slow there due to the fallen trees.

Bushes

Much of the map is tall grass with scattered bushes. The bushes are sometimes, but not always, mapped, so treat these with caution.

Out-of-Bounds

The large marshes in the northern part of the map are out-of-bounds per park rules, and they are marked this way on the map.

The Courses

Getting to the Start and Finish

There is a 600 m walk from the parking lot to the Assembly/Finish area. From the Assembly area, there is an additional 250 m walk to the Start. All the courses share the same Start location. Allow about 10 minutes to walk to the Assembly area, and an additional 5 minutes to walk to the Start.

Special Start Procedure

All the courses have a required, marked route out of the Start triangle. Runners will punch at the Start triangle and then follow the marked route, which will be indicated in the terrain as a streamered chute and on the map as a dashed purple line. There is no control at the end of the required route, but the required route must be followed in its entirety.¹ The purpose is to get runners out of eyesight of competitors starting after them before the runners start making navigational decisions.

Note that while all the courses have a marked route out of the Start triangle, the White and Yellow courses will have a different marked route than for the other courses (Orange, Brown, Green, Red, and Blue).

(The printed Course Setter's Notes inadvertently omit Blue from the list above.)

Spectating

The park is very open, so there will be some opportunity to spectate from the Finish arena.

Course Styles

White and Yellow are Classic-style courses, while Orange, Brown, Green, Red, and Blue are "Extended Middle" courses. The Middle-style courses have a high density of controls. The courses also have a number of shared controls, so be prepared to see a lot of other runners along the way! And be sure to check the control numbers!

Since "Extended Middle" is a non-standard course type, the estimated winning times have been given on the main event page.

Course Stats

Here are the course details: 

    Course     Length       Climb     Controls
    White      2.6 km     35 m  1.3%     12  
    Yellow     2.5 km     35 m  1.4%     13
    Orange     5.1 km     85 m  1.7%     23
    Brown      3.9 km     60 m  1.5%     19
    Green      5.1 km     75 m  1.5%     25
    Red        6.2 km    115 m  1.9%     28
    Blue       8.1 km    155 m  1.9%     35

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¹ Inquiring minds might wonder why there isn't simply a control at the end of the required route to force people to go to its end. That can't be done because of the rule requiring every course to have a different first control.