World of O News
In today’s leg in Route to Christmas 2022 we travel all the way to New Zealand to a long leg in an ultralong distance race on the Hogsback map. Thanks a lot to Felix Hunt for the tip!
Felix writes the following about the leg:
This map is called Hogsback and the bush on it (native nz bush) is quite slow. This long leg (10 – 11) came about halfway through the course and people took a variety of routes. The conditions for this race was very cold and later in the day it started hailing and got very windy.
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 are some words from Felix Hunt on the leg (Felix also ran the fastest time on the leg, but was more than 10 minutes off the winners overall):
Joe Lynch was the fastest runner on the day but he took what is likely a slower route choice up the stream and through the bush to the left, which although minimising climb, involved a lot of bush bashing. I was surprised to beat Matt on this leg (considering how much slower I was on the rest of the course!) but I think I may have taken slightly better micro route choices along the first hill and avoiding the bush going up the spur halfway through. The conditions for this race was very cold and later in the day it started hailing and got very windy so many later starters were deterred from going along the top due to the extreme conditions up there. The valley in the bush was much more sheltered.
Comparing the route of Hunt and Odgen (the illustration below the one below), you can see that Odgen seems to have lost some time on the extra climb to the top (versus staying in the hillside as Hunt did), and runnability (and maybe the storm?) might also have made it worse on the top. From the map the top looks quite OK, though, with the hillside being more of a risky choice… And going left through the bush does indeed look slower…
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!
