Route To O-Season 2020: Day 52

We continue with the 10Mila focus in Route to O-Season 2020: Today we travel back to the last leg of 10Mila 2016 in the men’s class. 

Request: The plan is to present more 10Mila legs the next days – please send me a note at jan@kocbach.net if you know about other interesting 10Mila route choice legs!

This leg was decisive in the battle for victory in 10Mila 2016: Kalevan Rasti with Thierry Gueorgiou was in a one minute lead on the last leg before this leg, but lost the initiative by taking a non-optimal route on this leg.

After 9 legs it was clear that the fight for victory would be between IFK Göteborg, SNO and Kalevan Rasti – with Eskil Kinneberg, Jonas Leandersson and Thierry Gueorgiou battling in the forest. Kinneberg started nearly two minutes behind the two other teams, but managed to get up and make it a leading trio after some kilometers running. Gueorgiou then got a one minute lead through good running combined with a slightly shorter forking to the 7th control – but a slower routechoice to control 8 (see below) made him loose the advantage.

Can you spot the faster route that Gueorgiou couldn’t? 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. As you might have seen already, it is tempting to use the small path slightly to the left of the line around halfways on the leg. However, this makes you lose some height, and you also get a more stony entrance to the control. Instead you should keep higher up in the hillside (to the right of the line) and use the opportunity to run in the fast runnable forest to the right of the line and then drop down into the control. Södertälje and Göteborg solved it in a perfect way along this route, while Kalevan Rasti went down on the path.

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!