World of O News
Today’s leg in Route to O-Season takes us to (arguably) the most beautiful city in the world for some urban orienteering. The chosen leg is taken from one of the podium finishers from the Norwegian Orienteering Federation’s sprint course setting competition.
Course setter is Kristine Fjellanger, and the city is of course Bergen, Norway. The chosen leg is the main route choice leg on the course – the leg to control 12. According to the evaluation panel it is clear that the course setter has put a lot of work in this particular leg. Read more about the course in the evaluation at the Norwegian Orienteering Federation’s webpage (Norwegian text).
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. The evaluation panel’s conclusion here is that the leg is very well balanced with many realistic route choices – with the leftmost choice (A) the fastest to avoid climb and stairs. With no stairs and the elevation differences taken more gradually than on the other routes, this seems like a good analysis of the leg. The B and C variants would probably be chosen by up to 50% of the runners in a real competition, losing maybe(?) 10-15 seconds or more? What do you think?
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!
The nice thing about this area, is that you need to take the elevation and climb into consideration. Although the right route choices are shorter, the cost of going steep down the stairs (which is slow) and then climb back up again towards the control, will make them slower. This compared to the A alternative which is slight downhill most of the route, and thereby fasilitates very fast running. Both the B and C alternatives makes you go down and up again, and will lose to alternative A.