Route To O-Season 2020: Day 9

– Australian granite terrains can make some really good route choice legs – like the 8th leg on the long distance at JWOC 2007. That’s how Christian Bobach put it back in 2007 – and the statement still stands. Today’s leg in Route to O-Season 2020 is another throwback to the first year of “Route to Christmas”: An interesting leg from JWOC 2007 in Australia!

The chosen leg is leg 8 in the M20 course from JWOC 2007 Long – presented on day 14 of Route to Christmas 2007 – but then without a WebRoute where you could draw your own route. The route choice drawing + splits was prepared by Christian Bobach back in 2007 – thanks again to Christian for preparing this. 

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. Note that based on some good comments on yesterday’s edition, the comments typed along with the routechoices are now shown in a separate “tab” below. This makes the comments more accessible, and hopefully more people will take the time to add a short comment (I’d really appreciate it). Either about their routechoice, the terrain in general or the leg in general. If the analysis surprises you, you can even go back and draw another route and add a comment then.

Then you can take a look at how the runners have solved this leg below. Again, there was no analysis provided in the original “Route to Christmas” edition back in 2007 except for this image (non-rotated). As you can see, Australian runner Simon Uppill’s route to the left (light blue; fastest route while Uppill is 5 min back overall) definitely seems to be a good choice which might be a bit surprising for some who are not familiar with the terrain. Also Stephan Kodeda’s route quite far to the right (green; second fastest route while Kodeda was 6 minutes behind overall) was a good choice. What do you think?

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@kocbach.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!