Route to Christmas: Day 5 2016

Today we are travelling to Finland for a dark September night in Route to Christmas.  Arttu Syrjäläinen has tipped us about a nice long leg which was common for the men’s and women’s course from the Finnish Night Champs – thanks a lot for the tip!

Note that the contour interval is 5 meter, so those hills are real hills even if we are in Finland.

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). Note that the contour interval is 5 meter, so those hills are real hills even if we are in Finland. Can you spot the safest & fastest way to the 9th control?

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. Interestingly, the three fastest routes are run on three different routes. The very fastest is AirPekka Lassiila running extremely fast around to the right on the road. Oskari Liukkonen is third fastest straight (according to GPS-times) while Mikael Fabritius is second fastest by going around to the left.

However, when you remove the fastest to the right and left, the picture looks interesting (see below). Now it suddenly looks like left is the only good option. This indicates that going left is safe – or that most of the best runners took the left option.

Looking at the women who had the same leg, the picture looks similar to the men’s with the best on the right/direct option removed. Conclusion: At night you should take the safe route – in daytime the rightmost choice would probably have been just as fast…

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!