World of O News
Today’s leg in Route to O-Season 2020 is from World Games Middle distance in Poland back in 2017. The chosen leg is the “long” leg to the second control which was shared by the men and women. Thanks a lot to Nic G 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):
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.
Here is the comment from Nic G about the leg:
I’ve been watching a number of previous years’ races on youtube. One I hadn’t seen before was the Wroclaw World Games middle distance. There was an early long leg shared by men and women – my impression was that the top women spread more across the options than the men so perhaps the better to focus on [the women]. Although a certain Swedish man known for his love of the red line learned that straight isn’t always great…
Then you can take a look at how the runners have solved this leg below – both the men and the women’s routes are included (note that split times are based on GPS-data, so they are not accurate – it is not expected to change the general picture, though). Clearly it is faster to go left – but some top runners (like for example Gustav Bergman and Helena Jansson) – took other routes and lost significant time. It is quite surprising that so many choose other options, but they probably underestimated the green ….? Any comments about the leg from the readers?
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!
Looking at how “good” my choices are throughout this series it becomes very very clear that the further away from home my understanding of what’s good and whats not goes from OK to “Oh, my dear”-pathetic. Hopefully I would have done better in the forests than I’ve done at my desk.
Entering late, I’m very happy to see that the consensus route goes all the way around, past the last couple of controls, instead of running up & down in the hillsides. Was the finish area OOB?