Left, Right, or Straight: Leg Analysis #15

On the 31st of May, a long-distance race was held as part of the training camp for the Youth European Championships in Poland.

These courses offered the competitors many typical legs for this type of terrain.

One of them is the leg 3-4 for M18, M16 (same leg 2-3 for D18, D16).

This leg offered a range of three classic route variations.

- the shortest, but with two 30 metre slopes.
- the middle with one slope. (+200 metres of distance)
- longest with 0.5 slope. (+ 350 metres of distance).

On the Livelox website, we can see only a few GPS tracks of the competitors, and we do not know their strength or with what effort they ran this distance.

But it can still be seen that, among equal-speed competitors, the straight route lost to the right by about 30 seconds on average. See the tracks of D 18 class

The left one is about equal to or better than the right one. However, very little information is available. A few competitors ran that route; only 2. See the tracks of M18 class.

The left route is less predictable in the middle. There, it was important to accurately execute the transition between paths. And it was more difficult to approach Control than on the right route.

There were a few mistakes at the Contol approach from the straight and left routes. See tracks of M16 class.

On the right route, there were no mistakes at the approach stage, as it is, one could say, elementary.

Conclusion: At legs like 3-4 on direct routes you can lose rather than find. Especially at the beginning of a long distance.

Source: Livelox, http://3drerun.worldofo.com/2d/courseplanning.php

Aleksandr Alekseyonok, June 3, 2024

The book is in English, was first published on October 25, 2023, and has already been translated into four countries: France, Ukraine, Denmark, and Poland.

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