World of O News
Today we have a 2700 meter long leg in Hungary on the menu for Route to Christmas! The race we are visiting today is the World University Championships (WUOC) Long distance – a competition which has gotten a lot of praise.
The leg chosen for Route to Christmas is the 3rd in the M21E course – a tough, long leg with several route choice options. The runners need to take into account both paths/roads, climb, runnability and vegetation – which route would you have taken?
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 – the fastest runner on each of the five fastest distinct routes are compared.
As you can see, a slightly left variant was the fastest – with Swedish Rassmus Andersson running fast and securely. The illustration below shows that quite a few took a similar variant – but still the number of choices was big, and many runners lost significant time here.
Here is a comparison between Andersson and Denzler. One could assume that it was the middle part of the leg that Andersson made better – but actually he lost some time to Denzler here, and it was rather Denzlers bad micro-routechoices at the start and end of the leg which lost the Swiss some time.
Here are some further speed comparisons.
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 2016-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!
