World of O News
Today’s leg in Route to O-Season 2020 is another urban leg – this time a long leg from the Citysprint at Bergen Sprint Camp back in 2017. The chosen leg is leg number 4 which was run in both the men and women’s class.
Comment on Route to O-Season: Already at Day 24 – the last day in the original “Route to Christmas” series. However, for “Route to O-Season” there is still no end in sight. A lot of work to prepare these route choice puzzles every day, but it looks like they are still popular, so I’ll keep them coming. Tips about interesting route choice legs are still (and even more so now) very welcome!
The analysis is centered around the men’s class, however, as more athletes have entered their route in the men’s class. 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). Note that the map has a contour interval of 5 meters.
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 the alternatives below. Are you still sure about your choice?
Then we take a look at the results from the leg from the sprint split analysis system SPAS which is used at Bergen Sprint Camp. As you can see, the fastest split time is run on the F-route (all around to the right) – 7 seconds faster than the other alternatives. Unfortunately only one runner took any of the routes around to the left (E, F and D), where E and F should be the fastest on this leg. The reason for these being faster is too much climb AND too many 90 degree turns on the other alternatives.
This analysis view from SPAS shows the fastest time on each route along with how many chose each alternative. As you can see, alternative G was the most popular alternative, but you probably lost around 8-10 seconds compared to running around to the left. Looking at the women, three runners chose to run the E-variant, but these were far down on the results. However, the SPAS algorithm (based on performance index as defined in Winsplits Pro) has still calculated that alternative E is some 8-10 seconds faster than the H-alternative (which is the most popular alternative among the women).
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!
What was the equidistance of the map? 2m or 5m?
Contour interval 5 meter, see the intro to the leg :)
Interesting leg, the key is clearly the contour interval, which is 5 m and not 2 or 2.5 m as in most sprint maps. I selected a variant of A which would be fine if the extra climb compared to F was less than approx (782-657)/7 = 17.9 m. (1 meter climb corresponds approximately to 7 meter flat running). Climb difference is actually close to 30 m (9 vs 3 contours to cross), and thus A should be ca (30-18)*7/5=17 s slower than F. By coincident this is exactly the time difference between the best two times on F (HJW) and A (GW). Unfortunately applying the same technique to all runners/route-choices gives a more “blurred” picture due to difference in running speed, time used/wasted on map reading/hesitation and runnability. Due to simple straight road running, perhaps even E is the best route-choice?
Day 24–still loving these.
It is wonderful to see a variety of maps and courses as well as plan routes. Good for the brain to focus on orienteering when we must stay home. I’ve also learnt from comparing my route choice to the many other routes choices. Much appreciated.