Route to Christmas: Day 23 2013

For today’s leg in Route to Christmas we travel to “Julenisse-land” – to the west of Finland. The chosen leg is leg 8-9 in the M21E course from the “Finnish champions for Swedish speaking people” (FSOM Long) at August 10th 2013. Thanks a lot to Anders Bäckström for the tip!

Anders writes the following about the course this day:
It was in my opinion a very tough course, technically difficult orienteering all the way and soft ground mostly the time so it was very tired people at the Finnish line.

Based on the running speed in the terrain using the GPS-data, you can assume a speed of around 6:45 min/km in the marshes, around 5:30 min/km in the white forest and around 3:45 min/km on the road for the runners in question.

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 have solved this leg below.

Here is Anders’ analysis of the leg:
The road looks very long around, but it was the fastest. My memory tells me that it was about 1 minute faster than straight [Editors comment: Your memory is quite correct]. If i remember correct the strongest name in the field Otto Simosas (now B national team runner in Finland) went straight and lost 45 seconds. We who took the road (myself included) have been running in this Ostrobothnia terrain all our life, and saw that straight would be “suicide”. Even if it maybe not looks so bad in the map, the brushwood in the marches is very high here. But you had been running in it the first 8 controls so you should have been able to notice that for your routechoice. But generally the people from Southern parts of Finland went straight (they have only nice fast terrain at home were straight is always the fastest) and we living in this part of Finland took the road choice. Staffan Tunis, was fastest on leg – but without GPS. He took more or less same routechoice as me.

When looking at the second illustration, you can see how the pace of the runner running direct varies all the time due to the varying runnability.

Density map

See below for a density map of some of the ones who have drawn their routes so far.

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 2013-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.