Route to Christmas: Day 11 2016

In today’s edition of Route to Christmas we take a look at the most crucial leg in one of the most important races of 2016 – the World Orienteering Championships Middle distance. The leg in question is the 12 leg – the longest leg on the course.

The long leg to control 12 is the main routechoice leg in the course – a leg where many top runners chose wrong routes. 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.

Clearly the best routechoice is to run to the left, using the path as much as you can, and thus also reducing the climb as much as you can, as for the women’s race. The reason for so many runners taking the option to the right may be that the first hill on the route to the left might seem a little tough after all the experience the runners had with steep hills and cliffs on the training maps – this hill does however only have 10 meter climb and is climbed easily. The climbs at the middle of the leg on the rightmost variant are worse. Below are some more detailed illustrations for the complete field and for some of the top runners.

Worst of the top runners is Thierry Gueorgiou who loses 32 seconds by running to the right. With this time loss he is simply too far behind to win the race. Current leader Hubmann loses 24 seconds to the best route by going too far left and struggling under the cliffs – he still retains the race lead however, as Kyburz also loses some seconds to the best split. Even Dæhlie and Basset (both do not go straight over the first small hill but use the path instead) lose significant time here. Current 3rd placed Portin loses more than 40 seconds by going nearly straight under the line.

Density map

See below for a density map of some of the ones who have drawn their routes so far.

Additional information

You find the complete map in omaps.worldofo.com at this location.

Route to Christmas series

The Route to Christmas series at World of O has been very popular the last years – 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 RouteGadget, GPSSeuranta or 3DRerun from 2016-competitions – or old forgotten ones which are still interesting – please email me the link at Jan@Kocbach.net, and I’ll include 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!