World of O News
Today’s leg in Route to O-Season 2020 takes us back to Junior World Championships Long in Switzerland in 2016 – and again we take a look at the longest leg in the women’s course.
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.
Then you can take a look at how the runners have solved this leg below (from the JWOC Long 2016 women analysis article). As you can see, going left is too risky as you have to move too long in a very steep slope. The right/straight choice which is the fastest route also takes you through a steep hillside, but the really steep (and slow) part is much shorter. The more conservative choice of going even farther to the right the get a less steep slope is too long, and you also need to run a bit up again.
Here is the analysis text from back in 2016:
Due to the steep cliffs which are marked as forbidden, there are three main variants due be chosen on the first part of the leg – left, middle or right. Going to the right is not a real alternative for the women (as it was for a similar leg for the men), so two alternatives are left.
The majority of the runners choose to go straight using the middle passage through the cliffs, and the seven fastest times are ran here. The below illustrations of all routes chosen illustrates this. Note also how many different micro-routechoices are chosen – a good execution of the leg is very important.
The fastest runner going left is Sofie Bachmann (bronze medalist), looses 1:16 to the time of Simona Aebersold who has the fastest time straight. The comparison of the two routes below shows that Bachmann looses most of the time in the steep section – as the slope is steeper for the leftmost route than for the more direct route.
Her is an overview of the runners finishing in Top10 (+Simona Aebersold who wins the leg). Note how 7 runners loose more than a minute and two runners loose more than two minutes (Lundanes, Jalava and Novotna).
Finally a comparison of running speed which shows how some runners struggle to keep up the speed down the slope:
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!
