We will have an advanced meet this Saturday morning at Umstead West. Read below for the unique format of this event; but please note first that it is a mass start event. This means that everyone will start together at 10:00 AM. Please plan to be 15 minutes early for a briefing from the meet director. Don’t come late, or you won’t stand a chance! Keep in mind that you may have to walk about 1km from the parking area (on the side of Old Reedy Creek Rd, near the I-40 overpass) to the start, which is just past the gate. Also be sure to pre-register here.
Unlike most events, there will not be a pre-defined course that you need to run. Instead, it will be a (modified) Score-O, in which you have 90 minutes to score as many points as possible, visiting controls in any order you wish. Controls are worth different numbers of points, and the points for each control go down each time someone visits it. The maximum points for each control (i.e., what the first visitor will claim) will either be 10, 12, or 15, and will be printed in the leftmost column of the cluesheet. When you get to a control, there will be a mini-pad of paper. Rip off the top sheet and keep it; it will show the number of points that you earned for that control. The person who returns within the allotted time with the sheets that total the most points wins. People who return late will be assessed a 10 point per minute penalty, starting at 90 minutes and 01 second. You will not need your SI fingerstick/card. As a matter of fact, don’t carry it with you at all, to minimize the chances of losing it in the woods.
Strategy will be important for such an event. Note that you can acquire a lot of points by either being fast or by being clever, visiting controls that few people have visited. Note also that because of the way that the course is set up, there is very little chance of anyone visiting every control. We estimate that the most efficient route connecting all controls would require a run of approximately 9 km (straight line, from control to control).
If in a regular Score-O (which a Goat event is, for the most part), following would benefit you, in this case it does not. We could affectionately call this format an “Anti-Goat”. Being part of the Goat weekend, we thought it would be an interesting challenge.