Route to Christmas: Day 23 2012

Todays Route to Christmas is one of the highlights in the 2012 series. Not only one leg, but two legs, are offered. The race in question was held in tricky sandstone terrain in Czech Republic – the Czech Championships long distance, course setter was Radek Novotny along with Vaclav Zakouril, and we even have comments from both course setter and the winner Jan Prochazka.

Thanks a lot to TracTrac/Chris Terkelsen for providing GPS-data for this event – this made it possible to use the leg for Route to Christmas. You find the full GPS-tracking here in TracTrac. And of course also thanks a lot to Novotny and Prochazka!

– The best terrain you can find in Czech Republic

According to Jan Prochazka, this course was the best course of the year. Here is what Prochazka said in an interview for “The Course of the Year 2012″.

– They manage to set out really nice course with many different leg variations and suitable for nice TV production. Sand stones are the best terrain you can find in the Czech Republic. They are always challenging technically, but also physically. You have to climb up really steep slopes and still carefully read the map with many details. It is a Czech Orienteering Paradise!

We look at two legs – starting off with leg 4-5. 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 solved this leg below.

Now let us hear what the course setter and the winner has to say about the leg. First a general comment from the course setter Novotny:

– It is funny that perhaps most decisive leg on this demanding course was the short first TV leg between contorl 11 and control 12, where many runners did a completely unnecessary detour loosing about 1 minute.Jan Sedivy among them.

Then the comment about this leg from 4 to 5:

– The idea was to cross the less interesting part of terrain by a significantly long leg, providing several options and thus also somehow higher level of uncertainty. The alternatives offered were rather even, so that it was up to each runner to take the one fitting most to his nature and show great long leg execution skills. A small trap was prepared at the end of the leg, as it was necessary to read the whole leg carefully up to the end and find the optimal approach to the flag – there you could loose time. An interesting continental option “all the way around up to the asphalt road” was finally taken by just one runner. However, taking in account his performance level, I would say that this detour appeared to be rather comparable with best options as well.

This is what the winner Jan Prochazka had to say about the leg:

– It was an early leg and I did not have time to check all the options during the first 4 controls. Going straight is always good option,
especially when hills under the line are not so steep. I took the straight one under the pressure time pressure, but I have to say, that I did not see the running around from the left and as Radek says, all the choices were quite equal, so my decision was good.

Second leg: 10-11

The second leg is the leg from 10 to 11. 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

The comment from the course setter Novotny:
– As course-setters, we hoped that the runners would get scared by the depth of the gorge right behind the control, what could make them consider more the alternative option saving some contours. Our estimation was not correct here – most runners took the straight one anyway. Those, who turned right after crossing the first gorge were also beaten by about 40 seconds. To me, the decisive moment can be found in the fact, that on the straight route both uphills were not too steep and could be even run up using tracks. Such uphills usually doesn´t couse big time losses.

The comment from Prochazka:

– In this leg I had already a lot of time to make decision, but I made it wrongly! Straight option was clearly the best, because climbing up
the hill was not steep and by the route (Radek already explain that). I took right option to save some energy, but in the end I have climbed
up nearly the same elevation on much longer route. Also execution of my route choice was not the best one, because Kodeda was running the same route choice about 30s faster. I was beaten by course setter on this leg! Congratulation to Radek…

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.