The Norwegian Champs Long distance was organized in Indre Østfold today in a terrain which is very untypical for Norway. The terrain has many deep valleys, giving interesting routechoices. Below you find the routechoices of some of the best runners in the mens class on some of the decisive legs.

Before taking a look at the routechoices below, take a look at the course without routes here:

• Map with GPSSeuranta tracking from Norwegian Champs Long 2010, H21
• Split times Norwegian Champs Long 2010, H21

Note that all the split times given below are taken from the GPS tracking, and may differ by up to 10-15 seconds from the actual splits. Still, this is interesting for the routechoice analysis.

Leg 2-3

In the interview after the race, the winner Olav Lundanes told that his tactic was to run around in this hilly terrain to save energy. We see this already on the first long leg to the third control where Lundanes (dark blue) choose a variant to the right around the forbidden area. His main rival Carl Waaler Kaas choose a more direct route – like he did in most of the race – earning around 30 seconds on Lundanes on this particular leg. The two fastest of the top runners have chosen a left/direct approach on this leg.

At this point in the race, Waaler Kaas has a lead of around 40 seconds to Lundanes.

Leg 3-4

On leg 3-4 we again see that Lundanes goes far around to the left (80% longer than direct), while Waaler Kaas takes a more direct approach. And again Waaler Kaas is faster. Weltzien chooses a middle variant going through some green areas – loosing some time compared to the other runners.

Waaler Kaas has now increased his lead to Lundanes to nearly a minute.

Leg 5-6

The really long leg in this course was the leg from number 5 to number 6. Looking at the route choices of the top runners, we can see that the routes are spread over a wide area. Fastest of the top runners is Olav Lundanes (13:03) with a left variant in which he follows the field for the first part of the leg – running flat in high speed for large parts of the leg (34% longer than the direct line, average pace of 4:53 min/km). Waaler Kaas looses 45 seconds with a variant to the right which is much shorter (only 12% longer than the direct line with a lot of up and down, giving average pace of more than 6 min/km). Weltzien goes even further to the right, and is some seconds faster than Waaler Kaas. Wingstedt runs all the way around on the road to the left – running nearly 70% longer than the straight line with an average pace of 4:12 on the leg, being about one minute slower than Lundanes.

Waaler Kaas is still in the lead, but his lead has shrunk down to just above 10 seconds ahead of Lundanes in second spot.

Leg 6-19

The legs between 6 and 19 were not that interesting from a route choice perspective, but it was in this part of the course the race was decided. Waaler Kaas lost 2 minutes to control number 8 due to a mistake in the open, flat area. From 8 to 9, Waaler Kaas lost some time in the part with cliffs – and Lundanes choose some better micro route-choices on some of the other legs between control 9 and 18.

Leg 19-20

Again Waaler Kaas chooses a direct variant, whereas Lundanes goes around to the left. Lundanes runs 184% longer(!) than the straight line, and looses more than two minutes to Waaler Kaas who is fastest of the top runners on this leg. Tiltnes and Hott also go around to the left – running approximately the same time as Lundanes, whereas Wingstedt goes around to the right (137% longer), and looses even more than Lundanes.

This leg could have been very decisive for the overall victory, but Lundanes had a 4 minute lead on Waaler Kaas before the leg, and although Waaler Kaas got closer to Lundanes, the gap was still to big for Waaler Kaas to fight for the gold.

Summary

The course setter (Tore Sandvik) presented an interesting course with many route choice options. Carl Waaler Kaas choose the best option on most of the route choice legs with his direct route choices – however Lundanes might have saved more energy for the rest of the course due to his routes going around on the routechoice legs. I was not present at the championships – so I might have missed some points in the analysis above. If you have something to add to the analysis – either based on the GPS tracking, the splits, or because you were running – please add a comment below.

Results

Men 21

Women 21

• All results

O-training.net

O-training.net will look into more interesting routechoice legs when the autumn darkness comes upon us the coming months. If you have legs or courses which are interesting for analysis, please send an email to jan@kocbach.net.

Also, remember that the O-training.net wiki is open to everybody for addition of o-training exercises and other stuff related to orienteering training. Please contribute!