Route to Christmas: Day 5 2019

Today we have got a real highlight in Route to Christmas: A quite short leg, lots of routechoice options, excellent(!) opportunities to lose a lot of time – and on top of that the course is relevant for WOC 2021 for those aiming at success in Czech forests in two years’ time. 

The leg was suggested in today’s interview in the “Course of the Year” series – by Denisa Kosova – as her favourite routechoice leg of the year, and I have also got an e-mail from Vojtěch Netuka suggesting this leg. Thanks a lot to both Vojtěch and Denisova for the suggestion – it was really a delight to study both this leg and the rest of the course.

About the terrain: This is typical check terrain where the runnability in the white areas without stones is very good, but both stones, green and steep hillsides limit running considerably. 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. As you can see, it is clearly faster to run around to the right, with the four fastest times being run here. You lose a lot of time going straight; the extra climb is tough, and attacking the control from the side in the steep slope is not easy – much easier to take it from above.

Here you can see clearer how the best times are ran to the right:

And a comparison between a few runners:

Men’s leg

The men had a very similar leg, also they from 6 to 7. Here the 6th control was placed a little higher, maybe making the choice straight a bit more tempting?

Again right is clearly faster, and left clearly slower. And still big timelosses when you run straight.

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 (men’s course) and GPS-data here for women and here for men.

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!