World of O News
Lean back and get some coffee for one of the absolute highlights of this edition of Route to Christmas! Today’s leg is a long leg from the Swedish Junior Championships Ultralong for juniors – with no less than 310 combinations of partial routechoices!
Thanks a lot for Simon Hector for providing the tip, and for course setters Per and Matthias Kallhauge for a BIG analysis – even translated to English. Big thanks go over Sweden for this one. If you find the terrain interesting, note that this is the neighbour terrain of 25-manna 2022 – might be worth a visit. The leg was the exact same for all junior categories (D/H18 and D/H20).
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. We start off with the usual World of O illustration with color according to time – for only the men.
Including also the women gives this picture:
Next, I put up the first part of the analysis by the Kallhauge brothers:
For control K5-K6 we have identified 310 combinations of partial route choices. The best route choice is indicated with a solid line. There are several different combinations that have similar estimated times. A poorer route is indicated with a dashed line and also how much time that is estimated to be lost on that partial route section.
None of the runners with the best time have managed to choose the best route in combination with a perfect execution.
If a runner chooses several consecutive poorer route choices, the time loss should be added for the individual components in order to get the total time loss. The best way is partly different for men and women. None of the runners with the best time have managed to choose the best route in combination with a perfect execution.
| K5-K6 |
Estimated |
Actual |
| W20 |
32:40 |
33:21 |
| M20 |
27:10 |
29:18 |
| W18 |
32:40 |
33:44 |
| M18 |
28:30 |
29:31 |
Here are first the alternatives with time differences for women, and then the same map for men:
Then the second part of the analysis:
The runners seem to have acted much as we thought in advance. First they look close to the line and see the hole in the forbidden areas that leads north of Kärrsjön. Then they look wider, reject the route choices east of Kvarnsjön, but consider the dirt roads to the west, despite having to run 1 km crooked road 90 degrees towards the line. These two variants have been the main route choices used on the first part of the route. It is still surprising that no runners have chosen the route south of the speedway track and south of Kärrsjön, which we saw as a very good option.
From Källtorp, which most runners passed, there are two best route choices, either the long right turn using the roads or variants of straight on through the forest. For the straight on option, many runners chose to start on the road along the lake side and then climb the hill, which is less good than climbing the hill right in the beginning. Also for the path / road option it’s important to make all decisions right, if you for instance try to avoid the hill with the houses at the northern part of the lake and choose the path along the shore of the lake you will loose 1-1,5 minutes.
For the straight on option, many runners chose to start on the road along the lake side and then climb the hill, which is less good than climbing the hill right in the beginning.
Below are some of the standard autOanalysis plots which shows you a comparison between Viktor Svensk and some of the other alternatives. As you can see in the first illustration, Svensk would have been very close to the ideal time by taking Lagerströms route on the first half of the leg (except the first few hundred meters) -saving him 2 minutes of time. The second part of the leg Svensk is not far from the ideal route choice, and his running speed is among the fastest in the race. The second figure shows how Svensk might have saved some seconds in the last part, getting the time down some additional seconds.
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!
