According to the course planners estimates Lundanes route choice would be best for the runners strong in Nordic terrain, while the stronger road runners would benefit form the right route choice. So probably several of the Swedish and Finnish runners lost time by taking the road.

We also expected that runners from the smaller nations would opt for the road/path route choices as much as possible. So looking at all runners when commenting on whether a route choic is balanced or not will probably skew the result quite a bit. One should probably disregard the first 30-40 runners.

When I saw the Men’s course I didn’t think the leg to control 4 was that great: it seemed to me that the right hand route round the road was too obviously the best (2nd point above) and almost certainly the best for everyone (3rd point above) – the left route was horrible and Lundanes’s route saved less than 100m over Kyburz at the cost of a lot more terrain running … but a lot of very good orienteers got it wrong so i guess it was better than I thought!

Furthermore, in my eyes, it is absolutely forbidden, that a course planer makes long legs, where the difference in running time between different choices are not visible on the map. That means, after a thorough analysis, in a calm environment, it must be clear, why one route is faster than another one. If one route choice is much slower, e.g. because of runnability, without that beeing clear on the map, this is a bad long leg, or rather kind of a betrayal of the runner.

A perfect route choice is, in my eyes, a balanced one. Otherwise it is not a route “choice”, but simply a long leg. The idea of a real choice, must be a choice (sic!), and not simply to find the one and only fastest route (that would be absolutely obvious, if you only had enough time to look at it).

In a perfect world, balanced means, that the different routes are more or less equal, if a runner chooses the route according to his strenghts. Equal doesn’t mean obvious, so.
If there is e.g. a “classic” route choice with a big hill: 1. “right” route; longer, on the street. 2. “left” route; shorter, through the forest, and 3. the shortest route crossing the hill; then a fast “street runner” should be more or less be equally fast on route 1, as a “fast uphill runner” on route 3. (But not vice versa!).

In addition, a perfect route choice is not solved “at once”. Even after you, as a runner, took the “big” decision e.g. of “right-left-direct”, you should have further problems on your choice, force you to take further desicions after the “big” decision.

Anyway, I liked the classic WOC 19, and wished I had the endurance to run such courses.