Course Setter’s Notes
By Steve Gregg
This year’s Point Pinole event is being held later in the spring than it has ever been before, I believe, and as a result, the open hillsides are beautiful and green. Goats were grazing in the open areas until mid-March, so although the grass has grown up a bit since then, the terrain will still be fast and runnable.
Unfortunately the same cannot be said for the forested parts of the map. The poison oak gets worse every year, and much of the terrain that was once nice and runnable is now covered with mountains of the stuff. I have set the courses to avoid the worst of it. The Sprint Orange course features many short legs, and there will be little to no route choice, in part to make sure you are not tempted to venture into the really bad poison oak areas. The Long Orange course is much more of a "runner’s course". You will not be spending a great deal of time in the forested areas, and reasonable route choices will always exist to minimize poison oak exposure.
The poison oak in the park comes in three different forms.
- One consists of tall, bright green, impenetrable thickets. These are easily seen from a distance, and can easily be avoided. I have mapped the ones that I have deemed important for navigation with the dark-green fight symbol, but you will see many more of these that have remained unmapped.
- A couple of areas of the terrain are mapped with vertical green stripes. These are areas of somewhat thick, knee- to waist-high poison oak bushes. Visibility and runnability are both fairly good in these areas, but if you are at all sensitive to poison oak, you will probably want to steer clear of them.
- Finally, in most of the forested areas of the map, you will encounter sporadic ankle- to knee-high poison oak plants. I do not believe it is possible to completely avoid contact with these plants on either Orange course. Long pants are definitely advised — as well as thorough washing after your run!
There are many new fallen eucalyptus trees since our last Point Pinole event two years ago. Again, I have mapped the ones that I deemed important for navigation, but you will almost certainly encounter at least a few fairly large ones that have remained unmapped. Rootstocks are mapped with a brown ×, and several of them are used for control locations. Much of the time, the trunk of the tree is also mapped, with a brown line extending out from the brown ×.
All the maps will be printed on 8.5"x11" paper, at 1:7500 scale. The contour interval is 2.5 meters.
There will be no water placed on any of the courses, so please carry any water with you that you might need.
Here are the course stats:
Course Length Climb Controls Navigation
White 2.3 km 35 m 8 Beginner
Yellow 2.8 km 45 m 10 Adv. Beginner
Sprint Orange 3.3 km 70 m 16 Intermediate
Long Orange 5.8 km 90 m 13 Intermediate
Combo Orange 9.1 km 160 m 29 Intermediate
Note for the Combo Orange course: You will start with the Sprint Orange map. After punching the GO control, you will head directly to the Start (not to the Finish shown on the map), pick up a Long Orange map, and then proceed to control 1 on the Long Orange course. You will not punch a control at the Start area — all you need to do there is pick up your second map. The Sprint Orange and Long Orange courses share several controls, but for the most part you will be approaching them from different directions on each course, so there will be some fresh navigational challenges.