Route to Christmas: Day 15 2009
We have got one of the highlights in this years Route to Christmas today – Karst terrain from Slovenia with comments from several of the runners and the route planner. Todays leg is leg number 7 in the M21E course from the last event in OO.cup 2009 on July 26th.
We have been so lucky to get the course setter Ivan Nagy to give an introduction to the terrain – in order to let you get some background info for choosing the optimal route for this leg.
- The last two stages of OO.cup/09 were held on terrain of Ženček, which I consider a “moderate karst” area – by moderate I mean it is very interesting but not one of those super-intricate areas which are hard to find, hard to map, hard to get to, but easy to plan courses on. The runnability on Ženček is rather low – for most of us at least. This is due to very (sometimes extremely) rocky ground in some parts of the map combined with cut branches and sometimes patches of low vegetation. At places it gets really messy and you can’t really know what to expect because not all the micro vegetation can be shown on the map and too much of black colour would severly hinder the map
legibility. The white coulour is often on the edge of first green. Small footpaths paths are normally well visible but can be slightly overgrown. I think only the hardcore terrain runners can feel really comfortable choosing the straight routes on Ženček (throughout the whole race), but if you are really strong (and a little bit crazy) it can pay off.
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):
Webroute
Next 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. Some comments about why you would choose a certain route are always nice for the other readers.
Then you can take a look at how the runners who have drawn their route choice solved this leg. Some comments about the leg from some of the runners:
- Raffael Huber had the best time on the leg, running in S-shape (blue). - At stage 4 and 5 the big paths were usually fast and in parts the ground was very stony. Because we had controls in the same area as control number 7 the day before, i tried to find a route taking me close to the control on a big path, since this area was the most shreddering of the whole map. My teammate always tell that I’m a fast runner but can not read the map – so it was a good decision;+) To be serious i think Jure Zmrzlikar took the best route.
- Jan Prochazka won the race this day, but was surprised to loose 40 seconds to Raffael Huber on this leg (light blue route). - It was nice and extremely stony terrain. I did try to use roads as much as possible, because it was usually faster. I did run straight the leg to the seventh control, because I did not see any other option. I was really surprised, when I checked the splits and saw that I was beaten with 40s. Oocup was maybe the best terrain I did run this year.
- The route in purple by Oli Johnson going all the way around to the north-west seems to be a long detour – but still he only looses about 1.20 to Jan Prochazka on the leg. - It had been that kind of week at the OO.cup, and I thought that I would go for a completely radical round route on this long leg to see if it worked out… It didn’t, but I think you will agree that it was an interesting experiment, Oli comments on his routechoice.
About Mapping Karst terrain
Mapping Karst terrain like the one above is a difficult task. In that regard, I got a few interesting map samples of new and old map samples of terrain which are planned to be used for the 2011 OO.Cup race (thanks to Ivan Nagy for map samples which I was allowed to post here).
- The difference in mapping style is interesting to note. The leftmost map samples is from the older map (less details, made by Cesare Tarabocchia, Italy, latest version 2008)
- The rightmost from the newer map (more details, first two map samples by Zdenek Sokolar, the last sample by Jan Drbal, Czech Republic, November 2009).
Some prefer the mapping style of the old map which is easier to read in high speed – others (me included) prefer the mapping style of the new map which gives a lot more details for the fine-orienteering. Which one do you like better?
Complete map in Omaps.worldofo.com
You find the complete map and Routegadget info in omaps.worldofo.com at this location.
Omaps.worldofo.com
The ‘Route to Christmas’ series at World of O was very popular the two last year – and I’ve therefore decided to continue the series this Christmas as well. If you have got any good legs in RouteGadget from 2009-competitions – or old forgotten ones which are still interesting – please email me the link at Jan@Kocbach.net, and I’ll include it in Route to Christmas if it looks good. Route to Christmas will not be interesting if YOU don’t contribute.
There will be no analysis about the best routechoice for each leg – you can provide that yourself in the comments or in the Webroute. 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!
Note that there may be some errors in the Routegadget data (sometimes somebody draws a route for another runner just for fun). Please add a comment below if you spot en error.
Disclaimer: OO.Cup was one of the sponsors in Orienteering Achievement of 2009. The choice of OO.Cup for Route to Christmas is however done solely on editorial basis, and is not influenced by OO.Cup being a sponsor for other activities.