World of O News
Today we are moving to Denmark in Route to Christmas – to a terrain which is described as epic/legendary by Johan Aagaard who suggested the leg (thanks!). The chosen leg is the 24th leg in the H21 course from the Danish Championships Ultralong .
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). Aagaard comments on the terrain: – Many championchips, ranking events and qualification races have been decided in this particular terrain. It offers a lot of tracks (as usual in Denmark) but with the hills it is suddenly a knew kind of orienteering.
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. Aagaard comments: – At this leg the winner of the championship,Tue Lassen, is more than half a minute faster than the others at a very direct routechoice – not letting the tracks and roads lure him away from the fastest route.
Note that as this is an ultralong distance race (around halfway in the race), fatigue may play a role, and the GPS-tracks may not give the complete answer about which are the best routes. Lassen’s straight route does however look like a good choice also from a theoretical standpoint.
It is surely tempting to run around to the left or right when you see all the contour lines you have to cross straight – especially on an ultralong distance race – but when you count the climb on the straight route of Lassen compared to the routes around to the left/right, you don’t have to take much extra climb when going straight (feel free to add exact climb along the different routes as a comment!).
Here you can see where the time differences between Lassen’s straight route and Boesen’s route to the right occur. You may note that it takes quite some time to get out to the field on the route to the right, thus Lassen gets quite far ahead. Also, Lassen manages to keep good speed straight for most of the leg.
Here also a comparison with the route to the left – fast running, but it is quite a lot longer. But maybe a faster runner could have got closer to Lassen (or even beat him) here?
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 is a pre-Christmas tradition at World of O – 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 2017-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!
