World of O News
Still a long way to go until Christmas – but there were so nice, long routechoice legs at today’s Swedish Champs long distance that we make an early start this year – 104 days ahead of December 1st. The leg in question is the leg from control number 10 to 11 (there was actually also a very nice leg from 3 to 4 – I have saved that one for later).
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. When making your choice – remember that this is part of a long distance race.
Now you can take a look at a graphical analysis of the leg based on the GPS-data of some of the fastest runners between these controls (click on an image to see a larger version of it). Note that times are off the GPS, so there might be some inaccuracies at the start/end of each route/track.
As you can see below there are three main choices – either going direct, going far left or going to the right. Francois Gonon is fastest with a direct variant (15:28 according to the official splits). As you see from the illustration below, the runners which are closest to Gonon also run direct variants.
- Gustav Bergman is fastest of the ones running hard left (of the ones with GPS track available) – loosing 1:18 according to the official splits. Bergman runs nearly a kilometer longer (3.5 km compared to 2.5 km) – and still looses only a bit more than a minute. Too much time is lost on the parts without path on the middle of the leg to beat Gonon on the leg.
- Of the ones taking the rightmost option, Filip Dahlgren is fastest – loosing 43 seconds. Comparing Gonon and Dahlgren the routes are almost the same length – Dahlgren running some meters longer. It looks like there is too much height to be taken in the first half of Dahlgren’s route (this is were most time is lost).
- The winner of the day – William Lind – looses nearly a minute on his right/middle variant even if he runs some 40-50 meters shorter than Gonon. On the first part of the leg – until the path – he is just as fast as Gonon. The time seems to get lost on the second half of the leg where Gonon has a small path to follow the first part. Runnability also seems to be better after the end of this path.
Some resources:
