By: Ivan Banov

Ivan Banov — Tue, 25 Dec 2012 15:21:23 +0000

The main thing on this leg i think are the cliffs. They can be crossed in the upper part of the map via path and in the middle section. In the bottom part they are far to many to understand at first sight so the route choice using the asphalt is out of the picture + it is far too ling.
If we compare Lundanes’ and Kaas’ choices we see that Kaas looses 18 sec in the first part where he goes far to the right compared to Lundanes, but runs only on roads as where half of the time Lundanes spends running through the forest and some open spaces. Then we take the second part of the leg (to the attack point) and we see that Kaas looses 3 sec which is fairly small loss for a long distance. And finally the attack of the control – Lundanes goes around the green area and the depression and gains 8 sec on Kaass who runs straight through the green area.
Then we have Dehli’s route. For the first ~1/3 it is the same as Lundanes’ choice but then at the turn of the road he goes around to the left in order to evade the climb of the hill, where Lundanes attack the climb directly. Here Dehli looses almost 40 sec.
Kaas – Nordberg – here we have the same route with the exception that Norberg cuts a big part of the road running in the first half of the leg and gains 3 sec to Kaas. But Nordberg looses 48 sec in the fist 3/4 of the leg, maybe little bit lower speed compared to Kaas, but in the very last part of the leg he gains some 9 sec.
And last I will discuss Weltzien – Lindanes. Here we have completely different routes – Olav runs straight-ish and Audun goes just too far to the right and runs ~95% on paths/roads but still looses 90 sec.
So as a conclusion after seeing the GPS analysis provided by Jan I personally think the best route is Kaas/Nordberg’s, because you run large chunk of the leg on path/road with one small part through 1/2 open spaces, 1/2 light green forest.

Comments on: Route to Christmas: Bonus 1 2012

By: Ivan Banov