Route to Christmas: Day 21 2012

Todays leg in Route to Christmas is from one of the top placed courses in Course of the Year 2012 – the Norwegian WOC selection races long at May 31st 2012. The leg in question is leg number 28 in the M21E course – a long one at the end of a tough race!

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):

Location

You find other maps from the area in omaps.worldofo.com here. See also latest additions in 3DRerun from this area in order to learn more about this terrain type.

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 below.

Comments

Olav Lundanes, Magne Dæhlie and Hans Gunnar Omdal were fighting for victory at this point of the race – and on this leg it looked like Magne Dæhlie decided the race for himself after beating Lundanes with nearly 1:20 on this leg – taking the lead. However, Dæhlie lost his lead in the last “easy” part of the race – and Lundanes could thus return home happily after yet another long distance race this year.

This particular leg was Dæhlie’s, though! Dæhlie was physically strong at this point in the race – and also was tough enough to dare to take the height early on the leg – thereafter “cruising” along the paths. As you can see from the comparison with Lundanes, Dæhlie managed to keep the speed high in significant part of the leg compared to Lundanes. Compared to Omdal, Dæhlie took a lot of time due to his choice at the start of the leg.

Comparing all runners on this leg with GPS-data, it is not that clear that Dæhlie’s choice is superior to the other alternatives. It might just be that Dæhlie was stronger in this part of the race. What is sure, though, is that it looks like going left is better than going right!

Any comments are very welcome as always!

Additional information

You find the complete map in omaps.worldofo.com at this location.

Route to Christmas series

The ‘Route to Christmas’ series at World of O has been very popular the last years – and I have therefore decided to continue the series this Christmas as well. If you have got any good legs in RouteGadget, GPSSeuranta or 3DRerun from 2012-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.

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.