its all about stodge, bikes, MTBO and the outdoors
The first round of the national Mountain Bike Orienteering League comes to Stafford at the end of February.
After loss of permissions on the original area, I have managed to negotiate access to MOD Stafford, a huge ex-RAF logistics depot. The area gives a mix of dense urban-style paths and roads, open land and small patches of forest, promising exciting competition. More details and online entry soon at www.walton-chasers.co.uk
Driving into Dorset to get down to Hurn forest, the venue for the first round of the newly formed MBO South league, I was greeted by huge flocks of presumably migrating birds wheeling in the sky. I have no idea what they were as birds are not my thing, but they were fantastic to watch. Impressive, too, was the huge statue of a stag perched above an arch on an entrance to Charborough Park on the A31 after seemingly miles of estate boundary wall.
The Hurn Forest event was heaving with people when I arrived, the MBO South advertising doing its stuff attracting lots of bikers (over 70 competitors). They were also offering map board hire which went down very well.
Hurn is another one of those orienteering areas that is so mediocre on foot but perfectly suited to MTBO, and although a little small, looked great. It is also flat as a pancake, which suits me!
I went off hard from the start, splashing through ice covered puddles and immediately started having gear problems and very cold feet. I couldn’t get big ring at the front and a couple of the small cogs at the back were still slipping on the new chain, meaning I had to manually flick the chain onto the big ring and leave it there, grunting the big gears, grinding the chain on some ratios not designed to work well, the mud from the puddles adding to mechanical mayhem.
I rode well and cleanly not making a mistake all course, only losing a little time on one control (number 9) where I picked a safe option on the bigger track, which turned out to be just as slow as the more direct line on the smaller path.
After winding my way around the map I eventually crossed the line in 38.5 mins, winning by 30 seconds, a great start to the new season and especially pleasing after my pre-Christmas illness.
After a long break to try and warm up frosty feet and far too much chatting ,I competed in the second of the three events Wimborne Orienteers were providing that day, a schools league foot orienteering event. I enjoyed a well planned green course which avoided the majority of the grot but the plantation furrows were energy sapping, always just that bit too far apart to run across comfortably, but nicely stretching those hamstrings.
After a fairly straightforward series of legs I was going to take a direct line from 12 to 13 through the open next to the OOB marsh but one look into the woods had me heading round on the tracks, avoiding a mushy bramble fest!
Downloading for the second time that day I was very pleased to see I had won this, too!
With the night event start a good few hours away and a hot shower and a slice of cake beckoning at some friends in Romsey I decided to keep my headtorch in my bag and head for home, a happy Stodge.
Footnote: It is interesting to compare the two maps above, one with MTBO symbols, the other a tradditional foot orienteering map, it shows the differences well.
Results available here http://www.wimborne-orienteers.org.uk/wim/11%20Hurn%20Forest/hurnresultpage.htm
MBO South Report here http://www.mbosouth.co.uk/MBO_South/Welcome_files/Southern%20Series%20Round%20One.pdf
A very stiff wind blowing across Sutton Park, just north of Birmingham, meant the club tent couldn’t go up so the national inter clubs qualification races were not quite as sociable as normal. However our new club captain Kelvin got a good turn out for Walton Chasers, my club. I had a very late start but wasn’t expecting much help from it, Sutton park being essentially flat and very very fast.
I ran hard through the first 9 controls in the open area cleanly and could not have gone any quicker. I wobbled on number 10 but made a full on mistake on both 11 and 12. Sutton park is blessed with acres of dense holly trees and I couldn’t make the vegetation fit the map in the low visibility thrashing around in the circle. I think I was probably within 5 metres of number 11 on my initial attack but must have missed it.
I pulled myself together and only made one other little mistake on 15. I started to tire as the course climbed to 19 before a final blast up through the holly trees but I held it together on the potentially difficult number 22 but the flag was hung high, then picking up another Chaser before the final sprint for the line, finishing in 62 mins for the 9.1km. I think the mistakes mid course cost me about 3 mins, but this would not have brought me up many places. Most of the Midlands best had done 57 mins but an old rival from my days as a junior in the South West Andy Simpson was well ahead winning in 52.
Results available here http://www.octavian-droobers.org/results%2011/csc11/index.htm
We have another new area coming to MTBO this year, Swynnerton and Hanchurch Woods, near Stone in Staffordshire. A Potteries Orienteering Club Area, they have all but given up on it for foot orienteering, the brambles and undergrowth completely overwhelming the map, but for MTBO it’s perfect for a middle race.
I have spent a few Saturday mornings out both on bike and foot working on the map which is very out of date, with huge tracks now gone beneath brambles, and lots of new MTB tracks appearing all the time. I spent today surveying the trail-fairy made downhill areas. It’s got my mind working on how to map some of it. Great sweeping single-tracks but with, eerrrrrmmm, well just say the odd obstacle, built by, eerrrmmmm, nutters!
At present I think I will probably map them with a pink bar across the track but I think a few of them need an exclamation mark or two as well.
CycleShack is a new bike shop located near to Cannock Chase at Heath Hayes, just off the A5/M6 Toll, between Cannock and Burntwood. It is run my Matt Williams, who has dabbled successfully in Trailquests/MTBOs in the past and knows Cannock Chase like the back of his hand.
Hosting lectures in a bike showroom cleared of its stock is a novel way of getting people into the shop and, judging by the nearly full house, it works. There was a mix of cyclists and runners of all ages present to hear the first in a lecture series by acclaimed nutritionalist Barry Murray.
As I saw Barry last year which helped me alot, I knew it would be useful to go, and perhaps get some inspiration to tighten up my diet again.
Luckily Barry was slightly late, as, otherwise, he would have caught his audience tucking into the cake and coffee supplied. It broke the ice nicely as he was setting up, us all hiding our cake & surreptitiously munching away when he wasn’t looking.
This week’s lecture was entitled ‘How to Boost your Immune System’. Very apt, as I sat there sniffing away.
Barry’s delivery of what could be a very boring subject was first class. He explained everything in layman’s terms with little diagrams and lots of similes: Good Guys, Bad Guys, building your walls, arming your soldiers, and bringing in helpers and backup.
His cheeky Irish lilt and casual manner also helped make the lecture entertaining and I learnt a great new word, ‘arseways’, as well as lots of advice on how to combat those nasties intent on making me ill again.
With my cold in full swing he advised hitting the Vitamin C hard, although a little late, and I have taken him to his word. Apparently Vitamin C is water soluble so you can’t overdose on it, it just comes out in your urine. So today I am taking rather alot of it. The only side effect is that the amount people can stand varies and the side effect is diarrhoea :-{ no problems so far……
Thanks to Barry and Cycle Shack for a great evening. Barry has a Facebook group where he posts regularly for anyone interested in nutrition for sport . The next lecture is in two weeks, check the websites below for details.
http://cycleshackonline.co.uk
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Cycle-Shack/165968540084214
http://www.optimumnutrition4sport.com/ http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/OptimumNutrition4Sport/131822740956
A new umbrella organisation for MTBO in the South of the UK http://www.mbosouth.co.uk has its first event of 2011 next weekend (22nd Jan) at Hurn Forest. Combined with some foot O and even night orienteering it looks worth the long drive.
more details at http://www.wimborne-orienteers.org.uk/wim/11%20Hurn%20Forest/Hurn%20Forest%20Jan%202011%20Flyer.pdf
It was nearly a case of going down stairs on my bottom on Sunday morning, the New Years Day score event of the previous day having taken its toll on my calves and quads. In fact I had to force myself to walk down them properly carrying the box of SI kit.
Leading up to the event I had decided not to run, so soon after being ill and not wanting to pick up a silly injury at an event not important in my MTBO training, but I was leant upon by Cath and a couple of other club members to support the event and run (this quandary may make an interesting blog item in the next few weeks, watch this space).
I stretched and stretched, warmed up and stretched some more before starting steadily, legs like lead, but I swept through the first 4 steadily before my first encounter with the huge linear marsh that runs through the valley that bisects the southern part of the map. Although the wet bit doesn’t extend far it is surrounded by man eating tussocks and reduces all but the most determined to a comedy walk.
I made a little error grabbing the wrong track on the way to 7 losing perhaps 30 secs but ran cleanly through the rest of the first map, getting lucky off-track several times with good bunny runs through the terrain speeding things up.
I made another error coming out of 13 losing about a minute and a half going too high and overshooting the control before bouncing back to it, but got a lucky break on the way to 16 with a good elephant track across the dreaded marsh. After 18 I started the final climb for home. My legs had had enough by this point and it was all I could do to keep running up the track to 19, but kept it going to the finish.
Given the state of my legs I was happy with 3rd some 7 minutes down on Iain Stamp and a minute down on Mikey Hopkins.
For those looking at the map thinking it would make a great MTBO area, it would, but it is unfortunately covered in bridleways: http://www.streetmap.co.uk/map.srf?X=405165&Y=311172&A=Y&Z=115&ax=405130&ay=311130
Results and photos here: http://www.walton-chasers.co.uk/results/2011/clubchamps/index.html
This years New Years Day mass start score event was held at Twemlows, an old overgrown old Army/RAF base near Whitchurch, Shropshire. In fact its only 3 miles from our old house near Market Drayton and would have been our closest orienteering area but it wasnt mapped at the time.
After the usual hung over phaff to get a club team sorted we all headed off to the start a few hundred metres away. This year a new concept was to be tried to get rid of the mass packs that form when 150+ people start at once. In fact, last year as I turned back from my first control I met 100 people coming in after me.
So to counter this we all had to go to the control code of our age class first. Being an M35 I had to run the full length of the map to number 135 before I could start hoovering in the controls. There has been some discussion post race as to the fairness of this approach, it particularly penalising the women and favouring the older junior classes but its an idea that can be improved upon for next year.
I nailed all the controls on the first map but took a daft route coming back up to the map exchange losing some time to an out and back on 118 and 112 rather than sweeping through them before going back towards the start.
I was a little worried when I came across my 7 year old coming out of 137 a control way off the path but left her to it, knowing she couldn’t stray too far.
After the map exchange my legs started to get heavy and tired, having gone off too fast at the beginning, and made a small error losing 30 seconds on 132 thinking the boulder marked on the map was an unmarked ‘fire bin’, but essentially I started to slow.
Turning for home I entered the finish field with leaden legs, struggling up the run in and ended up =5th fluffing the finish punch and losing a place, very unlike me.
A mass start score is a great way to use a small area like this and an event on New Years Day is a great way to start the year. Looking at Holly’s splits afterwards Cath and I were gobsmacked and more than a little proud to find she had got control 123 on the second map too !
http://www.wrekinorienteers.co.uk/res/twemlows2011/team_laurie_bradley_trophy.html
Happy New Year everyone