Route To O-Season 2020: Day 25

Today we again travel to the country where next year’s World Orienteering Championships is to be organized: The Czech Republic. The year is 2011, and the race is a long distance chasing start World Cup race in the Liberec area.

Thanks a lot to John Chandler for the tip and for Eva Jurenikova to dig up her training diary to check out her thoughts on the leg back in 2011.

Note: Did you register for “Lockdown orienteering”, kind of a competitor to “Route To O-Season 2020″? I did. “Lockdown orienteering” is more intense and with more time-consuming puzzles than “Route To O-Season 2020″, organized from Friday April 10th until Monday April 13th. Last chance to register is today April 8th at 11 AM GB time (that is 12:00 CET). Entries and all information available here.

Back to today’s leg. 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). The terrain in Liberec is not the fastest continental terrain around, especially when going uphill the paths are faster than the forest.

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. Based on the split times (official split times BTW, not GPS split times), it looks like going around to the left is the fastest and safest choice. The route by Jurenikova and Brodmann (running together as they started nearly together) which goes first straight and then on the fields to the left is probably just as fast as going left. Here are Jurenikova’s thoughts about the route:

I think that my thought was to circle the first hill. I take only a few contours after passing the stream, and it is possible to run directly uphill in white forest. The rest of the circling is done downhill on path. The main part of the rest of the climb is done on the fields to the left like many of the others. That was a good choice, especially as the fields where flattened down after the men who started earlier.  Today I would probably have looked at the route choice on the paths/forest roads to the right first.

The key on this leg was to minimize running in steep hills (straight up in the terrain), and then run on without insecurity. Usually you lose more time on insecurity and poor orienteering on the chosen route than on the route choice itself.

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!