Route to Christmas: Day 25 2013

Woops! There is usually no day 25 in the Christmas calendar – but I could not throw away this tip from Marcel Schiess about Bern By Night – so here you are with an extra bonus! Todays bonus leg in Route to Christmas is leg 1 in the Long course from Bern By Night at December 6th 2013.

Here is what Marcel writes in his introduction:
I organised last Friday a small training event “Bern by Night”. This series is part of the programme of the national training base here in Bern and, hence, some good names turned up. […] Because it is a mass start event, it needs good confidence in the beginning to take another route than the big pack. I gave the runners 200 m extras between the start point and the start triangle to study the long leg.

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 Marcel’s comment:
Matthias Niggli and Lukas Dienes have seen the alternative [to the right], which I believe is the faster one, especially if you optimise it a bit in the first flat forest part. Lukas and Matthias went a bit too long.

However – as you can see we have “impossible” overall World Cup winner Matthias Kyburz on the start line – and then there is not much help in taking a “smarter” route choice. The time run direct here is faster with a significant margin.

On the other hand, I am not completely sure that right is really faster – 600 meters extra (or a bit less if perfectly executed) is quite much for that extra uphill on the straight route …

Density map

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

Comments

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.