Route to Christmas: Day 24 2021

Today’s leg in Route to Christmas 2021 is leg 4 from the Norwegian Championships night – a leg with some interesting route choice options! Thanks a lot to Mathias Benjaminsen 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.

Then you can take a look at how the runners have solved this leg below. As you can see, it is quite clear from the GPS-data that it is advantageous to take the path to the right. Going straight is not that bad, while you lose time by going left. Actually, the course setter Stein Blomseth’s pre-race opinion was that straight (red lines in the second illustration) would be the fastest, but that going on the paths either left or right would be tempting.

When looking carefully at the map, it looks like right should be the fastest option at night, with quite a lot of path running. The reason why so few run to the right is probably that the entrance to the control is more difficult – and more importantly, you need to take extra climb at the start of the leg, making it tempting to avoid the climb and run straight or left down the hill….? What would you choose?

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!