Route optimisation (... or Do I Have Too Much Time)

Just like Clive Woodward at the last World Cup, I have been using some of the world's most sophisticated computer software (that's Paint Shop Pro) to analyse my tactical sporting performance. This is the surest and quickest route to success, and makes a pleasant change from just training really hard.

Last weekend, Lenka and I took part in another adventure race in the Lake District - we have to visit as many checkpoints as possible in 5 hours on foot and by mountain bike, in any order. The team that scores the post points wins, and different checekpoints are worth different numbers of points (denoted by my handwritten markings on the maps, below). We kept a fairly good pace, didn't suffer any mechanical failures or anything, but still only ranked 11th out of 26 teams.

This map shows our MTB route (in orange) and what must be roughly the route taken by the winners (in purple). So we both covered similar distances.

But this is a comparison of the running route - looks like the winners covered a fair bit more ground here!

However, the winners spent about 1hr 45 mins running, whereas we spent just over an hour. So we took longer than them to cover our MTB route, and made more few questionable route choices. We did the running first, but I'm thinking that it would have been better to get all the strenous mountain biking out the way. Hmmm, so many possibilities - still I think that we are close to getting the right formula for Ultimate Success. We've already stormed up the series table by a mathematical quirk.