Route-choices in the Czech way
January 21, 2008 ...by Bronek Pribyl
Last Sunday we (Michal Smola, Jan Sidla and me) went to Chriby to have some ultra long training. Chriby is an upland with typical Moravian terrain - hills up to 600m above sea level, many narrow valleys, gullies, paths and distinct vegetation boundaries. Jan prepared 3 hours long course. The beginning and end was on a tourist map, in the middle there was a long course embedded on true orienteering map. Although we did not run in competition pace, we decided to test some route choices. On the pictures you can see Michal's choice drawn by red, Jan's by green and mine by blue. In each of four following pictures there are three executed route choices. Before you read further, try to guess which one was the best!
10. Jan had chosen to take the longest route through the valley with a steep ending, Michal ran quite straight across the hill,
so I had no other good option to choose. I decided to run with Michal, but at the hilltop I noticed there is a third route though.
As you can see it's some kind of hybrid. Michal's choice was the fastest, with Jan's about one minute behind.
My hybrid-route was obviously the worst one, Michal beat me by two minutes.
14. As the last one on previous leg, I had the privilege to choose as the first one.
I choose to return back to the road and take advantage of the hard surface.
Michal took the left option by following a major path and Jan had to settle with the straightest option.
When I came to the control, I thought they were hidden somewhere, but as I looked across the valley I saw both of them approaching.
The road-option was surprisingly the fastest, about a minute ahead of Jan and a minute and half ahead of Michal.
15. This leg was weird. I planned to take the left option by joining the major path and continue along the vegetation boundary into the valley.
Michal wanted to go quite straight, but not crossing the hill strictly, of course. Jan took the longest route by approaching the control from above.
He was the only one to keep his plan. I ran too right and missed the major path, so I continued straight across the hilltop to the vegetation boundary.
Michal planned to cross the second valley in the upper part, but because of many fallen trees he crossed it with me.
Jan won with half a minute lead ahead of Michal and me.
17. On the last leg we couldn't identify three different options for quite a long time. In the end we found following routes: Jan took the left road option, which was quite up and down. Michal started by following the contours, joining the path afterwards with a final right-side approach to the control. I settled with the mid route. I also followed contours in the beginning, but I rather should have dropped a bit to join the path in the valley a bit time earlier. This path wasn't too good anyway, there were fallen trees across it on the clearings. In the end of my route I saw Jan and Michal arriving to the control at the same time. I was about half a minute late.
As we finished this course, we started to run back to our car about hill or two away.
It was quite an interesting training, the weather was pretty good (10 degrees C, somewhat cloudy; keep in mind it's January!),
so we were satisfied ... until Michal told us this was his third 3 hours long training this week.
Bronek Pribyl, TZL.
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