Route to Christmas: Day 11 2022

From ultralong distance in marshes to running in tunnels of a fortress: Today’s leg in Route to Christmas 2022 is the complete opposite of yesterday’s leg from the roots of orienteering at the Norwegian Champs Ultralong distance. At the 11th day of Route to Christmas we visit a very special sprint race in Poland – the 4th stage of the Pomorze Sprint Cup 2022.

This race came to my attention after being nominated several times for the Course of the Year 2022. Based on previous experience, not all are happy with this kind of course being part of Route to Christmas – but this looks like so much fun that it is worth putting it up. Have you ever been running through 1-metre wide and 1,8-metre high underground dark tunnels and corridors with hundreds of branches going in completely crazy directions? This is what one of the competitors wrote about the race:

The course was not only super fun, but really challenging, as the route choices were quite unusual. It was something completely different than i have ever run, demanding phisically and mentally. Additionally the surrounding, mix of small, dark corridors and open fields of Citadel made a wonderful atmosphere.

There is even a YouTube video taped by one of the competitors:

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). Note that the control description for control 10 and 11 is included below. Also, to help you I marked a place which is forbidden to cross with a thin red line, so that you don’t get tempted.

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 find the course setters routechoice analysis of the leg here. And I don’t blame you if you passed through a wall which is impassable, I don’t think it is easy to understand this map. But I still think it was worth bringing it up here, because just looking at the map, trying to understand where to run and imagining being there is a small adventure in itself. You find all courses from the race (this was from W16) plus the course setters analysis of most of the legs from the competition in this comment for Course of the Year 2022.

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, 3DRerun or Livelox from 2022-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!