Route To Christmas: Day 12 2023

Today’s leg in Route to Christmas 2023 is leg 5 in from the long distance event at Day 2 of Lipica Open 2023 in Slovenia – in a nice and quite technical karst terrain.

I got hold of the one who ran the fastest time of the leg – Gustav Hindér – and he was kind enough to write this introduction to the terrain (thanks a lot, Gustav!)

This was my first time in Slovenia and during the first stage of Lipica Open I realised there is a lot of stones here, especially sharp ones. In combination with the relatively hard ground (in comparison to squishy Scandinavian forests), there is a high demand on forest running technique, including a stable core and trusting you feet to keep your steps in place and to be able to parry any “foot faults”.

If one usually has problems with uneven terrain, be sure to look for route with more runnability an extra time. During the second stage the stones were of less issue, though …

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.

And here are Gustav’s thoughts about the leg:

During the second stage the stones were of less issue so the decision of running around was made for two other reasons.

1. The first reason was due to that the first controls of the course had been quite intense with little time to reflect on route choices on the course’s later long legs. Therefore, taking the path to control 5, with less technical challenge, made it possible to analyse the later parts of the course while still keeping a high pace.

2.  The second reason was to preserve energy. When running a long distance race, it can be beneficial to take a route choice with less climb and higher runnability to save some power for later parts of the course. There will be time to get fatigue anyways.

I am usually a guy who likes to run straight since I have a  relatively low running speed, but am quite strong in the forest. However, taking the path is just too much better some times…

Looking at the routes colored by variant below, it is clear that on this particular leg, it was actually fastest to run around. Even if this terrain is not the most stony in Slovenia, it is quite broken up, and both the navigation and the running takes more time than when running around on the path. But the ones going straight probably had more fun :)

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!