Route to Christmas: Day 23 2015

Today we travel to Italy to an area close to where the World Championships was organized in 2014. The chosen leg is leg number 9 in the M21 course in a regional race on September 13th 2015 (but still with good competition). The tip about the leg – including an illustration with routes and split times for selected runners – is provided by Stefano Raus.

The terrain is quite hilly with variable runnability. The white is fast (although running in the slope always slows you down a bit), but when the ground is stony or there is green on the map that slows you down.

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 the analysis by Stefano Raus:

No one did the route marked in my mind as the best one: The first half like Giacomo Zagonel (light blue) and then down into the forest like Mikhail Mamleev (dark blue). Mamleev ran a lot on the paved road, and that is not so comfortable when you have spike shoes, but he was still the fastest one on this leg.

So I think that Mamleev was running faster than the others when crossing the valley and going down in the forest, and maybe not hesitating at the beginning

From the finish I saw the passages of the athletes and that was nice, like a live coverage (even though Roberto Dallavalle decided to go down the little path so he was not visible), and actually runners like Alessio Tenani were running very fast in the open area, but then they had to cross the steep valley. So I think that Mamleev was running faster than the others when crossing the valley and going down in the forest, and maybe not hesitating at the beginning when they had to plan what to do on this leg.

In fact his choice is not the best one, but with his experience he managed it very well and probably he tried also to run very fast during this long leg to test himself and his performance because this race was the weekend before the Italian Long Championships.

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 – giving the readers the opportunity to do one Route Choice Challenge each day from December 1st until December 24th. If you have got any good legs in RouteGadget, GPSSeuranta or 3DRerun from 2015-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!