Route to O-Season 2020: Day 3

Today’s leg in Route to O-Season 2020 is from one of the last large competitions in Europe before much of orienteering was shut down due to Covid-19: Lipica Open 2020. The chosen leg is a long routechoice leg from the first stage – leg 5 in the M21E course. Many other courses had a similar leg.

Thanks a lot to Matjaz Stanfel for the tip, including prepared GPS tracks!

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 left, even if it is somewhat longer. However, going higher up in the hillside is not as short as it may seem on first sight as you have to run in-and-out several valleys of varying width and depth. Also, you need to climb more using the direct routes, and runnability is better lower down in the slope where it is flatter – you can also use several path segments down there. Thus, a clear win for going around to the left!

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 O-Season 2020 series

Route Choice Challenges while waiting for the real action: With the upcoming orienteering season indefinitely on hold in large parts of the the world due to COVID-19, regular orienteering route choice challenges may be one way to make sure those orienteering skills don’t get completely rusty. I’ll try to keep these coming daily, but need help from all of you out there to keep them coming and to keep up a certain quality.

Tips on good route choice challenges – either from races/trainings (even cancelled ones) or theoretical ones with accompanying analysis – are very welcome (please e-mail to jan.net).

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!