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Round 3 of the Dark and White summer trailquest league involved a drive right across the peak district to the outskirts of Chesterfield. I have only ridden here once before a long time ago and couldn’t remember much about it.
I was a bit hasseled at the start after the long drive over from Altrincham and probably should have spent a little more time working out a route before balsting off. Deciding on a downhill finish I headed north but faffed about with a daft choice of route between the various controls in the centre of the map, wasting time and energy when looking later on the sofa at home I spotted a much better route. I rode strongly considering my legs have done a lot in the past couple of weeks and I was particularly pleased about the way I was climbing the hills.
In the mad dash for home I never found #4. I went past the control site twice but couldn’t find it, not seeing any tape, being tight for time I just had to leave it and carry on which is a shame because it would have brought me up to =2 from 4th. The area is great for trailquesting with lots of steep hills and little bridleways, though as normal a little local knowledge does help.

Full results available at www.darkandwhite.co.uk or straight link here
Stats – 40.31km, 500m climb, 2hours 2 mins

Its official I had the phone call from the chairman of selectors on Tuesday night, I’d done enough, I am going to Denmark in June to represent Great Britain at the European MTBO Championships. I was worried as the team is only taking 3 men and the selection race at Gilling really didn’t suit me being very physical with easy navigation. So time to book flights, organise kit and get prepared.

Full details of the team here and link to the European’s site here

Sunday brought the first round of the revamped 2009 National Points Series for Cross Country Mountain Bike Racing. After a poor end to the year in 2008 it was great to see a full entry list for the first round, which was held at Sherwood Pines Forest Park near Mansfield.
I decided to ride it blind as didn’t have time to go over on Saturday evening for practice. I’ve ridden a Midlands XC race there in the past so knew what to expect, ie not much climb and fairly intense riding through narrow singletracks, in and out of the trees.
I got there in time for the Women’s prize giving, seeing British Orienteerings MTBO Team co-ordinator, Hillary Bloor, get 2nd place in grand vet. I then watched a spectacular crash at the start of the Men’s Elite race with fellow MTBO team mate Sarah Bayliss (who raced vets): bodies and bikes were flying all over the place before the peloton disappeared in a cloud of dust out onto the 6km course.
The mens elite train was awesome to watch as 6 riders in line, wheel to wheel, lapped at around the 19 min pace. The race was only decided with a sprint for the line on the last lap. A bag of nerves, I lined up for the start of the Masters (over 30s) race amongst a sea of sponsored riders. However, just before the start I was nicely distracted by the marshalls chastising a very ‘cool’ looking rider dressed in complete replica rainbow world championship winning kit complete with matching helmet. He eventually turned his top inside out after being threatened with a £2000 fine with lots of giggles and comments from those around him.
The start was bonkers with 80 riders sprinting for the gateway, then out over the dusty tracks to the first climb. I think even at that point I knew I was riding beyond my abolity. A quick glance at the heart rate monitor showed I had over committed but I had no choice but to keep going (it was that or to pull off and let everyone go by). The singletracks got a bit bottlenecked but after the first loop the field opened up and I tried to settle into a more comfortable race pace, but I still much faster than I should have been. A steady flow of riders overtook me, perhaps 1 a minute until suddenly I had about 20 pile past me with shouts of ‘on your left’, ‘on your right’ and ‘rider’ as the tops Vets who started a couple of mins behind masters caught me.  I did my best to keep out of the way and got quite a few “Thanks”, so I dont think I held anyone up for too long. By now the excess’s of my first lap were beginning to tell and I started to lap slower and slower, with only one familiar face from the Watt bike league cheering me on about half way around the course where he was marshaling.
My last lap was a whole world of pain and to be honest at that point I wasn’t sure how many I’d done, but was dimly aware as I got lapped by the winning masters that it meant I didnt have to do the 5th lap and I could stop in a few minutes. So 70th with lap times of 24, 25, 26 and 28 mins against the best mountain bikers in the UK, for my first NPS race, Im quite pleased, although with a spring and summer of quality speed training ahead I’m sure there is plenty more to come.

Full Report on British Cycling

After my disastrous event last weekend and a long chat with my coach I decided to have a week off training, get some serious sleep and to chill out a bit on my diet. Looking back now its so obvious I was over doing it, but now I am back on track and ready to start on a new quality training schedule that Adrian is currently working on now that the evenings are lighter.
Amazingly even after pigging out for 3 days I found I had still lost weight by Thursday, though I am yet to weigh myself after a weekend spent on a stag do with old friends, staying near Ingleton, in the Yorkshire Dales. On Saturday after a long day walking (well crawling at one point as we were practically being blown off our feet) I tasted the best sticky toffee pudding of my entire life at the Old Hill Inn. In the middle of nowhere this was a fantastic location for entertaining our stag and we had a great evening. We stayed at the Old School Bunkhouse, at the foot of Ingleborough, which is maintained to a much higher standard than many I have stayed in.
As the racing season is now upon us I have decided that my mountain bike needed a bit of a diet. With mapboard and pedals it came in at 26.5 lb which although not heavy is certainly not as light as it should be. So with scales out and a little research I concluded that lighter wheels, seat and pedals were needed.
After much web searching I have purchased a pair of Specialized Roval Controle XCs, a Specialized Phenon Seat and a pair of XTR pedals and will be cutting the excess tubing off of my seatpost. Hopefully this should remove approx 3lb from the bike.

I have also decided to ride in some of the National Point Series this year for staright cross country racing. The first race is at Sherwood Pines this coming weekend (5th April), so expect a very tired Stodge’s race report early next week.

A blowy morning with 3 up (Fraser and Phil) in the car and two bikes on the roof saw us pootling up the M1 to Sheffield for the penultimate round of the Dark and White Winter series. My car looked quite good with a carbon stumpy and ti Cotic soul strapped to my cheapy halfords rack  🙂

The event was based next to that Sheffield legend that is Eccy Woods on the south side of the city. One thing was for sure the only way out was up and lots of it!

Getting the map at the start I felt I should be able to get all but possibly one control so started out strongly in a anticlockwise clearing the controls as I went. I had a couple minor issues finding a couple of them so will definitely be finding a way of carrying the descriptions so I can read them on the bike in future.

It became obvious very quickly once the first major climb was out of the way that there were going to be some very strong headwinds to contend with, although I’m not sure which route offered the best shelter from them. After the Rivelin loop I suddenly was faced with 6km of riding against the wind which grew stronger and stronger. Steve Heading (legend) overtook me and slowly pulled away. At this point I started to struggle and was starting to lose time to people I would normaly expect to be much faster than.
The carry down Stanage Edge was scary, with the bike practically being blown from me as I struggled down the rocks with it over my shoulder. Back on the bike I again just seemed to get slower and slower. I necked my gels earlier than I intended but it didn’t seem to do much good. Turning for home, now with the wind behind me, I seemed to make better progress but it was obvious to me that I was just exhausted so decided to ride in early rather than make myself any worse.
Looking back at the past few weeks and talking to Adrian (coach) I think I have been burning the candle at both ends (and probably along its entire length) for too long. Work has been very hard, with lots of extra hours, training, family and with two races to organise, well……… its obvious looking back.

So better race preparation needed and a lots more sleep ! Another well planned event from Dark and White though, which I really enjoyed.
Full results here……

Its a busy time for me at the moment both at work, and at home with birthdays and weddings, events and planning (oh and there is a kitchen to finish at some point !).

I had a great chat on the train to London last Wednesday night with a chap who noticed I was course planning for the MTBO this coming weekend. After a while explaining all about the sport we got round to talking about him and his fitness and in particular the fact he had given up smoking in February. I found it extremely difficult to keep a straight face when he told me the reason for giving up was that he found himself taking stronger and stronger cough mixture when he had a cold at that time, in order that he could still have a fag and it was making him feel ill !
Last weekend saw Walton Chasers staying in Hawkshead Youth Hostel in the lakes for it’s annual pre season technical training. Although poorly attended, compared to previous years, those that made the trip north got to run in some of the most intricate contoured forests in England. After lots of training exercises on Saturday Cath set a very tough ‘training championships’ course for the Sunday that really stretched people. In fact I was the only one to get round the whole of the long course, the GPS showing I had done 515 metres of climb, but the experience of running in such intricate contour and rock detail is invaluable to orienteers normally used to competing in fairly simple Midlands forests and should put them in good sted for the coming racing season.
We called in at Wilfs on the way home and luckily for me there was a big demo day going on in the car park. I got to oggle lots of expensive bikes whilst Cath and Holly got to stand in the lunch queue !

Ive had a fairly easy week on the training front as I have been planning the MTBO ready for Sat 21st and am competing on Sunday at the National League Trailquest in Sheffield. As we have a houseful of mountain bikers staying for Friday and Saturday night I hope Cath doesn’t get too fed up with lots of ‘bike talk’ but it should be a great weekend.

Most Improved Sports Performer 2008

A very happy Stodge has just returned from this years Sports Stafford Borough Awards with a nice shiny trophy for most improved sports performer !
It was presented by Olympian Gary Foord of Mammoth Lifestyle who was the guest of honour for the evening. Gary’s comment ‘ Mark had shed a lot of timber this year’ was great and I think sums up well my move from recreational to elite competition this year.
My Orienteering Club Walton Chasers seemed to clean up at the awards with many nominations and two more gongs. Jane Christopher won Best female Performer and Oakridge School, Best Team Performance.