World of O News
Today’s leg in Route to Christmas 2021 is from one of the most anticipated races in the international orienteering season 2021 – the World Orienteering Championships Long distance in sandstone terrain in Czech Republic.
The chosen leg is the 2nd leg in the women’s course – the longest and potentially most decisive leg. 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.
The full analysis for all of the course is available in the WOC 2021 Long analysis article, but the analysis for the current leg is repeated below. First you can take a look at how the runners have solved this leg below.
Then some more thoughts about the leg. The women’s long leg to the second control is similar to the men’s leg (see analysis in the men’s BIG analysis article), but the controls are placed in a way which makes the route to the left somewhat more advantageous. At Twitter’s WorldofO-account the women’s course was analyzed leg-by-leg as soon as the map was released, a few hours before the TV-broadcast started. Below the Twitter-post for the long leg to control 2 is shown, which includes possible route choices and elevation profiles.
The leg to control #2 is a major challenge were I felt out of my depth. Thanks to analysis of elevation profiles I think I would take B (around to the left), saving a steep hill climb. If I had to run this and take a quick choice, I would have taken A. What would you chose? pic.twitter.com/nniMdxKjGn
— WorldofO.com (@worldofo) July 9, 2021
Looking at the split times, the three fastest run to the right (blue below) – but they are also the three on the top of the results. The next three run to the left, and they are further down on the results.
Looking at Benjaminsen’s route to the left versus Hauswirth’s, you see that Benjaminsen loses 80 seconds by a routechoice mistake early on the leg. Without this miss, Benjaminsen would have been less than 20 seconds behind Alexandersson. In conclusion, left is probably slightly better when well executed, but very few took that route – and you don’t lose that much going right.
Here is a GPS-animation of the leg:
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 Christmas series
The Route to Christmas series is a pre-Christmas tradition at World of O – giving the readers the opportunity to do one Route Choice Challenge each day from December 1st until December 24th. If you have got any good legs in GPSSeuranta or 3DRerun from 2021-competitions, or old forgotten ones which are still interesting, please email me the link at Jan@Kocbach.net, and I’ll consider including it in Route to Christmas if it looks good. Route to Christmas will not be interesting if YOU don’t contribute.
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!
