Route to Christmas: Day 22 2019

Today’s leg in Route to Christmas is a very intimidating, long leg from the Bulgarian Championships long distance. Several classes had a similar long leg, crossing several valleys in a quite steep slope. We have chosen the leg from the men’s elite class here – the leg from the 13th to 14th control.

There is only a limited number of GPS-tracks available here, but to get some variation in terrains (not only Norwegian and Finnish terrains), we still include it and let the readers help with the analysis. 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, nobody dared to go straight in this tough terrain; no wonder as it is not straightforward to find a route which seems acceptable. Instead, all runners opted to run far around either to the left or right. Going left gives you some meters less climb (about 15 meter less), but on the other hand is some 150-250 meters longer to run, depending on the variant chosen to the right. Left might be a bit faster, as Nikolov who has the fastest time on the leg took a clear victory in the race.

Bonus leg

Today we also include a bonus leg. This is a leg where there really is a “best routechoice”, but the leg does not look as interesting as the leg above, and therefore it is only included as a bonus. Can you spot the best routechoice? 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):

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, the fastest route clearly seems to be an S-variant.

Density map

See below for a density map of some of the ones who have drawn their routes so far (available during the day when some readers have drawn their route).

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 2019-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!