Route to Christmas: Day 16 2010

– I think that this leg is the best in any event I have run at in the past year. That was the first line in a very nice email which arrived in the mailbox yesterday evening. – It was at “Caw fell”, day 4 of the Lakes 5 Day event in England, Simon Bradbury continued. And indeed, it looks like a very nice leg – and was therefore chosen as the leg of the day for day 16 of Route to Christmas 2010.

Thanks a lot to Simon for the tip (we are still open for more!). The chosen leg is leg number 7 in course 3. There were similar legs in the longer courses, but course 3 was most interesting because more runners had drawn their routes. 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. Unfortunately not all the best runners have drawn their route – so it is a bit difficult to make a full conclusion based on the posted routes. Based on the strength of the runners, I would think that you would not loose much time by going around to either the left or the right. Compared to the average time in all of the race, Charlie Adams has lost some time on his route (dark blue,fastest time) even if he is 2 minutes faster than Nigel Bunn (light blue). I would say that Andrew Bradley’s route (red) could be a very good choice. But I wasn’t there – so please join in on the discussions below if you have any comments and/or knowledge about the competition.

Updated 16/12/2010 20:00 CET: Now we also have a density map ready to show which routes the visitors of World of O have chosen. Very few felt strong enough to run over the top – even if this was the fastest time of the day on this leg. Most have done as I would have done – going around at one of the sides of the hill.

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 last years – and I’ve therefore decided to continue the series this Christmas as well. If you have got any good legs in RouteGadget from 2010-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.