Golden Goat (Golden Kid course) (2018-04-22)
Kategori: Competition
Karta/område: Pacheco State Park, California
Arrangör: BAOC
Sträcka: 7.42 km
Tid: 73:02
A mass start race under very tough conditions: 30+ degrees in the shade and pretty much no shade anywhere, tall lush grass (30 to 90 cm high) and a _lot_ of vertical climb.

RouteGadget with some GPS tracking available here:
http://baoc.org/gadget/cgi/reitti.cgi?act=map&id=417

We shared our course with the Golden Goat (12.6 km) for the first 13 controls, then they did a loop in the south end of the map before they joined us at our control 14. I ran more or less with the leader group (slowly falling behind a couple of the fastest Goat runners) for the first 9 controls, that is where I invoked the special rule for this race that allowed me to skip two controls, I naturally selected 10 & 11 for this, cutting across to #12. From this point on I was completely alone.

The group had missed half a minute to #4 when the path underneath the power line was so overgrown as to be completely invisible, so we hit the track instead. At this point the leader just ran along and didn't figure out his mistake until he had already skipped #4!

I missed another 30 seconds on #18 checking the boulders NNE of the control, otherwise I hit everything pretty much perfectly even though the flags were well hidden behind trees or boulders small enough to be hidden in the grass, I ended up finishing about 4 min in front of the guy who had first skipped #4 and then decided to go on and skip #19 at the end. OTOH that final skip allowed him to pass the young runner who ended up in third place after messing up the hillsides and ridges towards #14: He reported seeing a wild boar up in those hills where nobody else ran.
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Golden Goat (Golden Kid course) (2018-04-22) Golden Goat (Golden Kid course) (2018-04-22)