World of O News
Todays leg in ‘Route to Christmas 2008′ is from one of the rock labyrinth areas near to Le Caylar, on the Plateau du Larzac. – Wonderful to run on, even better to plan the courses, says Ray Hulse who gave the tip of this leg. Le Caylar is also the area which most people named their favorite place to orienteer in The Orienteering Achievement of 2008 Interview series. It is Christmas Eve today – so we saved the best for today – and even with a second bonus leg.
The competition is a French “national semifinal” long distance race – and this time we show two legs from the A course. The first leg is leg number 7 in the early phase of the race – a very long leg. Afterwards leg 28 at the very end of the race is shown.
The leg is as usually first provided without routes – you may take a look at it and think about how you would attack this leg (if the image is too small, you may click on it to get it larger):
Update 2020: WebRoute
Back in 2007/2008 there was no WebRoute in Route to Christmas – this has now been added to all old ‘Route to Christmas’ in March 2020. You can draw your own route using the ‘Webroute’ below. Think through how you would attack this leg, and draw the route you would have made.
A few different routes were tested according to Hulse, the quickest was to stick close to the line, pick a passage through the vegetation and then look for a smooth route through the rocky hills in the last part (the fence crossings help).
– It was a bit of a surprise to find that approaching the control via the road on the western edge of the map was only about 30 seconds longer; less surprising was the 3 minutes lost if you went round via the east. But as always, picking the best route wouldn’t be much use if you just got lost during the execution.
Hulse has provided us with an analysis of the different route choices here:
You can also take a look at how the runners who have drawn their route choice solved this leg here:
Next up is leg number 28. Leg 28 is shorter, but maybe even more interesting as it is difficult to spot the best solution to it – at least at the end of the competition when you are tired after fighting mentally in this demanding terrain for more than an hour. Again first without routes:
Then you can take a look at how the runners who have drawn their route choice solved this leg:
Source: Routegadget at this location. Thank you very much to Ray Hulse for providing the tip.
About Route to Christmas
The ‘Route to Christmas’ series at World of O was very popular last year – and I’ve therefore decided to continue the series this Christmas as well. Based on tips from YOU, we’ll see if Route to Christmas comes all the way to Christmas Eve, or if we stop earlier. If you have got any good legs in RouteGadget from 2008 competitions, please email me the link at Jan@Kocbach.net, and I’ll include it in Route to Christmas if it looks good.
There will be no analysis about the best routechoice for each leg in this years Route to Christmas – you can provide that yourself in the comments. Not all legs are taken for the interesting routechoice alternatives – some are also taken because the map is interesting – or because it is not straightforward to see what to do on a certain leg. Any comments are welcome – especially if you ran the event chosen for todays leg!
