Route to Christmas: Day 3 2014

Today: Long and complex from the “Long distance Course of the Year 2014″! In today’s edition of Route to Christmas we are travelling to Spain – to the World Cup race long distance for men. The men’s class in this race was unfortunately cancelled after some controls were removed before all runners had finished the course. The chosen leg to the first control was however not influenced by this misfortune.

How much time is it worth spending there at the start triangle?

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).

What would you do if you got this monster-leg served at the start of a very important long distance competition? Lie down crying or waiting for the next starter is not a realistic option – here you’ll have to choose between left, right and straight already when leaving the start triangle. A decision which can loose you a few minutes before your race has properly started.

How much time is it worth spending there at the start triangle? 10 seconds? 20 seconds? 30 seconds? And how much time did you use to take your choice now at “Route to Christmas” – without the pressing Spanish heat? OK – I’ll be quiet now – select your choice and tell us why and how much time it took you in your comment…

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.

Analysis

The execution of the leg is just as important as choosing the correct variant

Below you can see the routes of selected runners for this leg. Going slightly right like Kratov and Rollier do is the fastest choice here – note however that there are many “micro route choices” on the way, and the execution of the leg is just as important as choosing the correct variant. If you start considering if you took the right choice instead of pushing along your variant, the seconds you earned by taking the right decision will soon have evaporated – not to mention if you took the wrong decision.

Rollier loses nearly half a minute to Lundanes on the first 400 meters of the leg – thus Rollier’’s variant could have been even faster with a better start. Lundanes and Sild lose around half a minute by running direct.

Going far around to the right and taking the control from the road was fastest in the women’’s course (see the leg and some comments here at o-training.net – this leg was also originally published at o-training.net) – the women having a similar leg. However, this option is a bit too long with the control placement in the men’s race – also the men are usually stronger when running direct.

Density map

See below for a density map of some of the ones who have drawn their routes so far (will be updated during the day).

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 2014-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.