World of O News
Today’s leg in Route to Christmas is one of the highlights of this season: The longest leg from Course of the Year 2018 – the World Cup Final Middle distance in Czech Republic. A very interesting leg in very interesting terrain. The chosen leg is leg number 19.
Head over to the article with interview with the course setter to learn more about the course from the World Cup Final Middle distance in Czech Republic.
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. As you can see, it is clearly faster to run around to the right (run backwards out of the control), with many, many runners taking the slower routechoices. Of those were many top runners, including for example Olav Lundanes (Norway). This was one of the most decisive legs in the course where winner Milos Nykodym took the correct route choice and ran a top 3 split time. The fastest runner on the direct route was Olav Lundans (around 730 m, 6:01), losing nearly a minute to the fastest man around, Gustav Bergman (1180 m, 5:05). Thus running around is around 60(!) % longer – but saving a lot of climb!
Here a comparison where you clearly see how you have to go far down on the list before you get the pink legs, going straight. The three fastest running straight are four of the biggest names in international orienteering the last years, Olav Lundanes, Daniel Hubmann and Matthias Kyburz.
Here is a comparison between Hubmann and Lundanes.
The women’s long leg is balanced differently, with straight and around being close to equal:
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 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 GPSSeuranta or 3DRerun from 2018-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!
