World of O News
Today’s leg in Route to Christmas is again taken from one of the nominations for Course of the Year 2024, the very interesting World Cup Sprint race in Italy this spring.
Make sure to check out Course of the Year 2024 and submit your nominations in the comment field – there are already nearly 40 nominated courses which you can see here.
The World Cup Sprint round in Italy this spring was very enjoyable to watch on TV, and as only a split time analysis was provided at World of O this spring, I had looked forward to take a look at some of the most decisive legs during the Route to Christmas period. In the men’s class, in addition to the leg from 4 to 5 (which was a bit tricky to analyze based on the GPS due to the terrain up on the hilltop), leg 8 to 9 was one of the most decisive ones where several top runners lost time (see the split time analysis here). The women’s corresponding leg was not that interesting as the upper variant was not a realistic option there.
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.
Below the routes are colored according to variant to give a clearer view of the how many runners chose each variant.
From these two illustrations, one can see that there is actually not a big time difference between the fastest runner taking right (green, 2:22) and the fastest runner taking left (blue, 2:32, second fastest split time) and the other left option (red, 2:34). However, quite a few runners lost significant time by going left, and you can also see that 6 of the 7 fastest routes are green, while most of the runners actually chose either red or blue. Thus, it seems quite clear that the green variatn is faster – and it is also easier to execute with less turns.
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 2024-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!
