World of O News
Today’s leg in Route to Christmas 2021 is a leg from the Finnish Champs Long distance – a leg with a lot on spreading of the runners. Can you spot the route which would be fastest for you here? Thanks a lot to Miika Kirmula for the tip!
We already had a leg from this race in this year’s edition of Route to Christmas, but then in the women’s class (see here) – it could probably be a good idea to look at the routes and analysis here before deciding on this 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.
Then you can take a look at how the runners have solved this leg below. Here is what Miika Kirmula has to say about the leg:
– As the ground was quite tough to run almost all the time with little stones all the way and quite uneven ground, going around more than usual in Finland was probably quite good choice on many legs.
Going completely straight or left looked a bit too rough for me
– I therefore planned to do some kind of route choice from the right. Going completely straight or left looked a bit too rough for me. After that there was still plenty of time on the road to plan if I should go more straight through the marshes or all around. I was quite flexible at the first part of the leg, i.e. how the open yellow looks etc., and the edge of the marshes could be also really fast in this terrain with quite many animal paths.
In the end Kirmula decided to go nearly all the way around, and this was also the fastest route on the leg. As you can see, it is possible to run quite fast also with a more direct approach, and the ideal routechoice probably also depends on the runners’ abilities, i.e. being a fast road runner or a fast runner in the terrain.
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!
