World of O News
Today’s leg in Route to Christmas 2023 is leg 6 in men’s course from the Norwegian Championships long distance. The leg is not very long, but there is still an interesting route choice puzzle for you here.
Here is the terrain description from the invitation:
The terrain has partly good runnability and is partly difficult to run through due to high grass, heather, and blueberry heather. There are large moorland areas with good visibility, consisting of open bogs and exposed rocks. The courses will also enter areas with denser forest, mainly spruce forest. In some places, there are patches of juniper shrubs in sloping hollows and depressions.
Here are also some pictures from the terrain:
With that as background information, 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 with one color for each vaiant:
As you can see, there is a tempting route to the right, where you can avoid some climb and at the same time exploit some path running (which should be very welcome in this terrain). This does not seem to be the fastest route, however – instead cutting through the valley seems to be faster. The reason for this is partly that it is longer to go around to the path, but from the route comparison below it looks like it might partly also be due to the steep hillside with cliffs after the path running being very slow. Also you don’t acutally save that many meters of climb by going around to the right on the path. The routes to the left may look tempting because you avoid all the cliffs and get the uphill more gradually, but here you simply get too much climb combined with a too long route.
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!
