World of O News
Today’s leg in Route to O-Season 2020 is another long and interesting route choice leg from Switzerland. The chosen leg is the 15th from the M21 course in the first national Swiss Race in 2019. Thanks a lot to Pascal Buchs for the tip!
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 it was cold and it even snowed in the morning. It was sometimes quite slippery in the downhills – especially in the fields. And control 14 was a refreshment control (which may have influence the split times).
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 – split times shown here are actual split times (not GPS-based split times). Note that Matthias Kyburz did not race full speed in this race. This is the type of leg where no solution really looks tempting: Either you have to climb a lot straight out of the control (left), go far down out of the control (and then climb later; right) or try to find a direct route with less climb, but it is quite obvious that it is tricky to succeed with that.
Based on the split times it seems like climbing up from the control and then running quite flat and down into the control is the best choice (Pezzati’s choice), but there are quite small time differences here. When looking closer at the GPS, it looks like Buchs’ choice (going down earlier) may be slightly better than Pezzati’s choice. From the GPS it is also clear that Meier has nearly the same speed as Buchs/Pezzati, his route choice on the first part of the leg (uphill in the steeper slope) is where he looses 1:45. Egger’s choice (going to the right, but not all the way around) is only 20 seconds slower than Pezzati from the official split times, but based on the GPS-analysis it is probably even some extra 10-15 seconds sloer. Note also that the choice of Ueli (blue, going all the way to the right, route is taken from Routegadget) who won the race seems to be too long.
Any comments are welcome – the data available does not make it straightforward to make a full analysis here!
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!
