World of O News
The 19th edition of the traditional Route to Christmas here at World of O starts with a long and interesting leg from the Czech race INOV-8 CUP organized in north-eastern Czechia in early September. Straight or around – climb or not? Enjoy the challenges – just like the competitors!
Your job in Route to Christmas is to take a good look at the day’s leg, decide which route you would have chosen, and finally draw your chosen route. And optionally add a route comment (which is very helpful for the other participants). Below the route-drawing a small analysis of the leg is provided – which you are very welcome to comment on in the article comments.
And please let me know if you know about any good legs that would be interesting for Route to Christmas. I have got a few suggestions, but there are still around 20 days where I need a good leg to present – any suggestions are welcome. Use either the comments or (preferably) an e-mail to jan@kocbach.net.
Today’s leg: Day 1 2025
Today’s leg in Route to Christmas 2025 is the 8th leg from the INOV-8 CUP race on September 7th, and we are looking at the men elite course with some quite strong runners at the start. This is typical Czech terrain, quite runnable – and also quite steep.
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. The routes are colored according to fastest split time on the leg, with the fastest routes in green and the slowest in red.
As you can see, the fastest choice here was definitely to follow the slope to the left and avoid the big climb on the routechoices to the right. Going down and up again is around 600 meters shorter – and on larger tracks, but with around 75 meter more climb, this is too costly. Also, all of the climbing is quite steep – probably you lose even more time on the next leg due to this routechoice. The question when taking the left variant is of course if the small path in the slope is visible and runnable – that question is maybe the reason why so many chose to go down? I few also took the road to the left, but that was even slower. Based on the route choices, I would estimate a time loss on this leg of between 1 minute and 1:30 by going down and up again – and probably some additional time on the next leg.
Below the routes are colored according to variant to give a clearer view of the how many runners chose each variant.
Chosen variant ordered by leg result
| # | Name | Var | Time | Behind |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | JakubChaloupsky (22nd / -35.9) | A | 11:09 | + 0:00 |
| 2. | MartinRoudny (22nd / -45.9) | A | 11:15 | + 0:06 |
| 3. | MilanMalacka (1st / -22.0) | A | 11:50 | + 0:41 |
| 4. | VojtechKral (2nd / -36.5) | A | 12:01 | + 0:52 |
| 5. | MartinGajda (22nd / -21.4) | A | 12:18 | + 1:09 |
| 6. | JanGrundmann (4th / -37.5) | A | 12:22 | + 1:13 |
| 7. | MichalSvadlena (22nd / -58.6) | A | 12:29 | + 1:20 |
| 8. | JonasHubacek (22nd / -2.4) | D | 12:41 | + 1:32 |
| 9. | JindrichBenes (22nd / -91.1) | A | 12:46 | + 1:37 |
| 10. | VitHorcicka (15th / -101.5) | A | 12:47 | + 1:38 |
| 11. | FilipAdamek (22nd / -5.9) | D | 12:49 | + 1:40 |
| 12. | JachymCoufal (22nd / -0.4) | D | 12:50 | + 1:41 |
| 13. | RadimTokar (5th / -17.9) | A | 12:54 | + 1:45 |
| 14. | OndrejPipek (22nd / -69.6) | A | 13:03 | + 1:54 |
| 15. | JanGajda (22nd / -26.4) | A | 13:05 | + 1:56 |
| 16. | OndrejMetelka (9th / -40.9) | A | 13:10 | + 2:01 |
| 17. | OsvaldKozak (6th / -3.5) | D | 13:15 | + 2:06 |
| 18. | DominikPrusa (22nd / 20.8) | B | 13:17 | + 2:08 |
| 19. | TomasUdrzal (8th / -24.8) | A | 13:18 | + 2:09 |
| 20. | LukasRichtr (7th / 22.0) | A | 13:41 | + 2:32 |
| 21. | TomasRusy (13th / -37.2) | A | 13:47 | + 2:38 |
| 22. | JirkaDonda (3rd / 57.4) | E | 13:57 | + 2:48 |
| 23. | PetrHorvat (22nd / -35.3) | A | 13:59 | + 2:50 |
| 24. | VojtechOrany (22nd / -11.0) | D | 14:00 | + 2:51 |
| 25. | MartinPoklop (22nd / 54.1) | C | 14:04 | + 2:55 |
| 26. | AdamChloupek (22nd / 3.5) | E | 14:07 | + 2:58 |
| 27. | AdamJonas (22nd / 48.6) | D | 14:16 | + 3:07 |
| 27. | JosefKubecek (22nd / -31.5) | D | 14:16 | + 3:07 |
| 29. | MatejKamenicky (10th / 4.9) | C | 14:18 | + 3:09 |
| 30. | JakubSrom (17th / 0.1) | D | 14:35 | + 3:26 |
| 31. | MartinJonas (14th / 14.8) | D | 14:40 | + 3:31 |
| 32. | OndrejValenta (22nd / -56.3) | B | 14:52 | + 3:43 |
| 33. | DavidProchazka (12th / 40.8) | A | 15:04 | + 3:55 |
| 34. | OndrejMacek (11th / 49.8) | C | 15:11 | + 4:02 |
| 35. | MartinMelecky (16th / 65.2) | E | 15:34 | + 4:25 |
| 36. | JeronymKamenicky (20th / -40.0) | E | 15:41 | + 4:32 |
| 37. | OtakarHirs (21st / -56.5) | A | 15:43 | + 4:34 |
| 38. | OtaSkvor (19th / -30.8) | E | 15:45 | + 4:36 |
| 39. | DanielVandas (18th / 140.1) | D | 17:28 | + 6:19 |
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, Loggator or Livelox from 2025-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 gets interesting due to YOUR 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!
