Route To O-Season 2020: Day 27

[Updated with further analysis from Milos Nykodym] Today’s leg in Route to O-Season is an interesting leg I found when browsing omaps.worldofo.com from the last week.  The leg is from Czech Republic, and was run by Czech national team runner Vojtech Kral along with some other runners. 

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). There are very few GPS-routes here and therefore no real analysis, so please provide your own analysis in the comments!

And here is what you see when you stand at the control point (with the map overlayed):

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. In addition to the three runners for whom there are GPS-tracks, I have added a hand-drawn route all the way around the hill to the right. It is probably too long, being 20% longer than Kral’s route. To run the route around to the right faster, the pace would have to be below 3:30 min/km which is probably too fast as there are parts which are not flat/on road (Kral ran 4:25 min/km on his route to the left over the hill). The route of Schulhof is interesting, though, but probably Kral’s route on the left side of the top is the fastest here. What do you think?

Update! Thanks to Milos Nykodym for posting more routes from this leg on Facebook (see the comments) – note that there seems to be some GPS uncertainty here, but still one can understand differences for the different legs. Even with more routes, Milos still thinks Vojteks route above is the fastest. However, it is interesting to note both Marek Minar’s route straight (12:38; not exactly to the control though) and Misa Omova’s 14:55 direct for the women. Straight seems like it is a very good choice here!

Some more 3D-pictures:

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!