World of O News
Today’s leg in Route to Christmas is a long and decisive leg from the European Championships Long distance in Czech Republic in May this year. Today we look at the Women’s class – and the long leg to the 4th control were many runners lost several minutes.
In this hilly terrain it is all about understanding quickly where you can avoid climb
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). In this hilly terrain it is all about understanding quickly where you can avoid climb – while using the paths and roads to run where the terrain is fast. Can you find the best route?
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 you clearly see how only 5 runners are within 1:30 of Tove Alexandersson and Svetlana Mironova who are fastest on this leg. Generally all runners going right (or straight) lose around 2 minutes or more. With all these routes the overall picture looks a bit complex, so look further down for a clearer picture.
This next illustration shows the 6 fastest going left and the 6 fastest going right. Here you see more clearly how runners going right lose a lot of extra time.
Here is a comparison between Alexandersson (left) and Brozkova (fastest to the right). Clearly what hurts on the rightmost route is the tough uphill on the last part of the leg – due to going further down in the valley and taking more climb. You need some practice to evaluate the climb on different routes quickly in this kind of terrain – not even Czech former World Champion Dana Brozkova saw this on home ground…
Density map
See below for a density map of some of the ones who have drawn their routes so far.
You need some practice to evaluate the climb on different routes quickly in this kind of terrain
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!
