Route to Christmas: Day 24 2013

This leg in Route to Christmas is the first leg in the M21E course from the Baltic Championships at May 18th 2013. Thanks a lot to Lauri Sild for the suggestion! Today we return to Latvia – we got many good suggestions from Latvia this year! The race was organized in Estonia (Thanks for the comment, J!).

Here is what Lauri writes about the event as an introduction:
Here is a suggestion for this year’s Baltic Championships in May. The event took place on a 30(!) degree hot day in the South East Estonian corner close to the Latvian border. The field was very strong, including most of the elite from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus and St. Petersburg. The course is pretty straight-on and the forest is mainly nice enough not to deviate too much from the line, but it offered some nice legs with different shorter and longer routechoices.

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.

As you can see, the left variant is faster – the road around to the right is far too long compared to the time it takes to get to/from the road – although it should be possible to run the right route choice somewhat faster. The marshes are too slow to go straight – you can see how the pace dips significantly direct each time you cross a marsh.

And this is what Lauri wrote about the even on his blog:

Baltic Championships marked the end of the spring season. The weather had become unbearably hot, a near 30 degree heatwave made the long distance very difficult. The previous week it was just warm and it already felt uncomfortable, now it was much worse. The legs were thick and as if glued to the ground. Nothing new. I felt generally discomposed, but I was trying to get in the right mode. The start went well, I was still pretty much in the game until about half an hour. It was already hard, but from approximately the 6th-7th control it was a whole other type of pushing. I had to force myself physically and technically the whole course after that. Small climbs were as walls, but fortunately I was still able to run (or sometimes walk) technically well. Different routechoices were pretty equal – if you’re not strong enough, you lose anyway. It was a struggle til the end, but it could have been worse. On long distances in this kind of weather I’ve usually lost from 7 to 15 minutes or even more to the winner, this time it was “only” 6:20. I have to turn more attention to this matter, though it seems to be a bit better than before. The starting field was strong, fortunately the victory was left home anyway!

You find the race in 2DRerun here.

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.