The Goat

Saturday was the Israeli version of the Billygoat, known mostly in the USA as a mass-start race with the option to skip a few controls. We first held one 12-13 years ago, and now Modi’in O-Club has started a tradition of organising these events, that will hopefully continue.

I ran the longest course (10.5 km), where you could skip any three non-consecutive controls. In hindsight, I think the best option was to skip 9, 15 and 21, but I started badly with a parallel error at 1 and decided to skip no. 3 in order to regain some ground. This helped me at 5 and 8, but I miscalculated the size of the trap at 20-21 and wasted another skip at 9 in order to clear my head with some easy orienteering, during which I understood my situation (dire) and had no choice but to fight on. Analysis of the split times shows that I lost at least 5 minutes by having to collect both 20 and 21, and a few more by missing 20 and a bad route to 21. I finished 14th overall, which isn’t too bad, in a time of 1:48:10, but the pack that I should have been competing with was under 1:40.

The course was well planned but in my opinion the steep and slow terrain isn’t the best for a race of this type, which should be more free-flowing. Many of the controls, even when easy to find, involved a scramble into the bushes or over large rocks. I enjoyed the physical challenge more than the orienteering, but overall it was a very good event.