World of O News
Today’s leg in Route to Christmas is a special edition showcasing the winner of the “Course of the Year 2019″, the M21 World course from the selection race for the World Orienteering Championships 2019 organized in the beginning of July. The chosen leg is the course setters favourite on the course, the 6th leg.
Note that a leg from this course has already been part of Route to Christmas 2019 – the second leg which was featured in Route to Christmas Day 3 based on a tip from Lucas Basset. We don’t usually use the same course twice in Route to Christmas, but make an exception to celebrate “Course of the Year 2019″ .
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. Here is the analysis from the course setters:
– We have 3 main routes, left on road / path, straight on with a lot of micro route choices and right as quickly as possible to the road. If you are taking the straight route, you have to read the map intensely to avoid all edges which will slow down your speed. Left and right gives less challenges regarding navigation but require good physically skills to keep the speed high enough to compensate for the longer route. It is not obvious for the runners which way is most suitable. There is also a tactical element, choosing to run on roads and paths can save some energy which can be useful in the end of the race? Control no 6 can be a bit technical and you have to slow down the speed to be sure to hit it directly.
Looking at the split times (split times here are from the timekeeping system and are thus accurate), the difference between left and right is quite small – those 28 seconds between Svensk (left) and Howald (right) might just be due to Howald not executing the route to the right perfectly; this route is definitely more difficult to execute perfectly than the route to the left. Going straight is even more tricky technically, and probably some 20-25 seconds slower than going right, but it is difficult to assess this more accurately than this. Note also that there is a difference between the two left variants; going too far left loses you some 30-35 seconds.
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 or 3DRerun from 2019-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!
