World of O News
Today’s leg in Route to Christmas 2023 is from a quite recent night orienteering race – the final of the Harry Lagerts Night Cup in the Oslo-area, Norway. This was the 24th edition of Harry Lagerts – and the race series have been featured in Route to Christmas several times already. Thanks a lot to Sören Jonsson for the tip!
Siri Ulvestad was course setter in this years’ edition – and according to Jonsson the second last leg was the most interesting in this year’s edition. The leg was shared by many classes – both men and women. Remember that this is night orienteering.
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. Note that some athletes searched extra around the control as the reflective marked had fallen down.
Even though it was popular to run quite far around on this leg, it is quite clear from the data that running one of the straight options is teh fastest. Among the men, Torgeir Tiltnes Nørbech runs fastest on a straight variant (although he probably should have taken a bit further to the left so he wouldn’t need to climb up between the cliffs). Also the two fastest women chose straight variants, a bit further to the left. The fastest option here is probably to run quite straight, while using paths were they lead approaximately in the right direction.
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 2023-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!
Extremely Great leg! Why?
The almost straight line (difficult at Night) is rewarded with a clearly fastest time if executed well. That is how it should be, as I observe more and more the opposite, going around is faster. That is a fact, but makes orienteering less interesting, it is still orienteering and not cross running!
Christoph