Category: Orienteering

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MTBO Camp – WRE Long race

MTBOCAMPLongrace14We woke this morning. To glorious blue Baltic skies and crisp sea air. The camp long race is a world ranking event for the elite riders and reading the final bulletin I was glad to be only riding 1/2 of the elite men’s distance.

After lots of chatting and catching up with old friends I headed out, to be honest a little apprehensively towards the start. The route to 1, involved a slow climb option on a fire road which I took, avoiding the steepest of the climbs. I was feeling a little depressed as rider after rider overtook me. I wasn’t working that hard, trying to be careful with my back, but soon found the red mist coming up and starting to push the pedals a bit too much, particularly on the road section to 2. I paid for it straight away with an over the handlebars into a wet ditch and then after hauling myself up onto a fire road and  relocating a realization I’d missed a track junction (my only real mistake of the course) which ended with me in a swamp splashing around in some brambles off track.  I calmed down, enjoyed the sublime views of forests and little lakes, the low sun reflecting fantastic light through the trees and concentrated on a mistake free ride and the faster riders stopped worrying me.

Although a little muddy in places, some of the single tracks were great and I enjoyed my full sus Whyte E5 for the first time properly chucking it about. At the half way stage I was starting to feel tired and was temped to bin it but the 2nd part of the course was a little less hilly and all to soon I was rolling into download.

So no win today but to be honest that shows I am on the right course for my current capabilities and I am more than happy with 5th – 10 mins down on the old men.

 

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MTBO camp – sprint

No warm up, no mental prep, just rocked up at the start line, said hello to a couple of people and then zoomed out into the night.
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A great little sprint area, Gallokken, next to the sea, but that meant sand hiding in the shadows, ready to make your front wheel go squiffy, exciting stuff in the dark.

I rode well, making only a couple of little errors, until the end when I lost touch with the map and messed up 11 and 13 big style but didnt lose more than 1.30 I suspect. The touch free punching was great, I wore it on my wrist and loved flying into a control, pulling a big skid turn and then powering off, my wrist beeping and flashing. Chatting to others afterwards it rewards good entry and exit to controls, affecting route choice, meaning you can save a few seconds if you come in at the right angle. Perhaps my views on touch free are now changing?

I just had a fantastic time, and now feel so alive! I can feel my back a little now, but nothing a little pilates before bed won’t sort.

Update: I’ve won Men’s Short 🙂   oops, though everyone else is at least 10 years older than me……

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MTBO Camp 2014 – Day 1

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My travel day started with a very antisocial 3am alarm, what was more antisocial was the M40 to London being shut, meaning a massive detour back round Birmingham and Coventry to get on the M1.

I’d resigned myself to missing my flight but the M25 London ring road was quiet at 6.15 and after a frantic scramble through security I raced into the gate, just as the last few people were getting on board and made it with a couple of minutes to spare.

Luckily Sandor who I was travelling with from then on had everything under control and I could sit back in the hire car and snooze as we crossed the bridge from Copenhagen over into Sweden. We had a huge Pizza in Ystad and a lazy afternoon in coffee shops before getting the late ferry across to Ronne in Bornholm the island in the middle of the Baltic Sea where MTBO Camp is being held this year.

After building bikes in the morning we cycled 12km against a drizzly headwind to Hasle and the event centre to register.

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We had a play with the new Sportident touch free punching system which we are using this week. I can see the benefit on bikes and ski–o but I’ve never been that convinced about touch free punching other than for the finish line for foot O. It will be interesting using it on tonight sprint, I think its placement on the bike is worth a rethink though; I don’t think the top tube by the headset is the right place… Looking down between your legs as you ride through a control might mean not spotting an incoming rider which might make life interesting if both people have their heads down…

I might stick it on my left wrist if I am allowed or on the handlebar grip perhaps.

I am looking forward with trepidation to this week. I haven’t MTBOd for 2.5 years, its  not the navigation I am worried about, its my fitness. After just 25km of riding today I really struggled up the final climb coming home this evening, lets hope my legs are up to the short course I’ve entered.

 

 

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Carsington Christmas MBO Score

carsington1My back has been getting better week on week recently. Is it the 4 months of Pilates? Is it the fact I am not driving 32 thousand miles a year in a worn out car seat? Or just time? No idea, but it means I am feeling confident enough to ride for a little longer and up steeper hills and, for the first time in 2 years, have been thinking about Mountain Bike Orienteering again.

I had originally intended to do the Military Challenge but this year it doesn’t seem to be taking place. A quick look at the BMBO website showed a fun Dark and White Christmas event on the Friday before, just up the road from me at Carsington Water adventure centre – perfect.

The weather forecast was terrible and, to be honest, I felt terrible too, with what I know now to be a good dose of man-flu.

Rocking up in the cold and dark, it was great to see Adrian and the Dark and White team again after so long and it was great to be finally doing my first event as a Vet, two years in!

I got some advice from Adrian about bumpy tracks to avoid, strapped on my long unused hope vision 4 ( now 4 years old and still going strong), Orifix mapboard and compass and headed out into a vicious head wind, intending to stay on the roads.

I’d decided I wouldn’t push my luck and go out for the full two hours allowed and the combination of my man-flu and my sensible head brought me in nice and early in time to catch up with a few old friends over some coffee and cakes. There were some serial comedy moments as people tried to make coffee and tea with the tea urn that actually contained mulled wine….

Lets hope this is the start of a recovery season!

Results available here

 

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Rome City Race 2013

Originally I wasn’t planning on joining Cath and her cohort of WCH juniors on the trip to Rome as it was looking tight for a project in work, #buildsydneylive, and not conducive to a bad back. (You have to have a medical certificate to compete in Italy)
In the end I got a late flight to spectate at the races and see a little of Rome.
Day 1 was held in a city park, full of Roman families enjoying the autumn bank holiday sunshine. Bikes, kids, segway’s, people everywhere. The event was a series of mass starts, the juniors and oldies going off in the late afternoon, middlies at dusk and the Elites in the dark for head to head night orienteering with some butterfly loops to split up the packs.
Everyone came back buzzing having had a great time.

Day 2 was in a more forested park which apparently was very challenging but I spent the day reliving some Architectural History and Junior school classics lessons pootling around Rome’s ancient Architecture “Caecilius est in forum” I’ve always wanted to see the Pantheon and it lived up to expectations with the sun casting its light through the oculus.

Day 3 was the signature event, urban orienteering through the streets of ancient Rome, the start and finishes overlooking the colloseum.
I managed to get hold of a map for a walk with my camera, did a few of the route choice legs and took lots of photos. Again everyone came back with a buzz of excitement. I certainly watched a few big names confused and befuddled trying to work out their way down off a hill top garden surrounded on all sides by huge walls.
Replacing the Venice street race this year Rome had a lot to live up to but judging but the comments at the finish the organisers managed it.
Results available at http://rome2013.net/images/Results/rome2013_overall.pdf

 

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Wightwick Manor Mapping

I have had a little mapping project underway over the summer and it is now complete. The club were approached by the Wightwick Manor National Trust site to help them with an orienteering project. Firstly we helped them understand what was possible before the committing to helping with the map and a permanent course for them to help both the NT and Walton Chasers. Mapping always starts with a base map and here we struggled with conflicting projections. The area is small and very complicated so the scale of the map was going to be large. The various basemaps and aerial photography we had do not co-ordinate well and in several places we were left guessing to what was actually correct, particularly as the boundaries were very ‘thick’. GPS at this scale was also not accurate and consistent.

On the ground I ended up back in traditional survey mode, taking bearings and cross bearings from known fixed points, and of course pacing. Although I would like to try mapping directly using a tablet computer in the future, the realities of sunlight, wind and rain meant I again used the traditional techniques of tracing paper, overlays coloured pencils and of course a rubber.

Beware though at Wightwick Manor, there must be a rubber thief lurking in the spectacular gardens. I lost 4 in two days at one point and if I do any more mapping it will go on a lanyard round my neck. I brought all the surveys home and Cath did the Cartography in OCAD 9. We will in future though try to use the new open orienteering mapping software that is now in Beta http://oorienteering.sourceforge.net/ This weekend we are soft launching the permanent course so the map will get a thorough test, lets hope I haven’t made too many errors .

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Sad news – John Searle

Today I have just heard that one of my early Orienteering Coaches who used to look after the Devon Junior Orienteering Squad in the 80s was tragically killed in a road accident near his home in Shropshire last week. John was a driving force for junior orienteering based at QE school in Credition as well as being a stalwart of Devon orienteering club organisation. He lead some of my very early trips away orienteering including probably my first real adventures away from home when I was 11 or 12 to the White Rose Orienteering Festival in Yorkshire and to the British Champs on Shining Cliffe.

John was an advocate of public transport and cycling and used to cycle everywhere therfore it is so tragic that he was killed in an RTA presumably just commuting to work after so many years of pedaling.

My thoughts are with his family, so terrible at 59 – John Searle RIP, thanks for giving so much to junior orienteering.

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Be2Awards & Talks 2012

photo by Paul Wilkinson

Last Wednesday I found myself underground at the Building Centre in London with a select group of people for the BE2Awards / Talks. (Built Environment Web 2.0 and Social Media) chaired by Bernie Mitchell

http://www.be2awards.com/2012-be2talks/

I’d been invited to speak about “BIM, Bikes, Blogs and Pozzoni”, particularly how BIM and social media go together like “ipads & skinny latte” and how I had used social media to promote Pozzoni’s BIM credentials since the 2011 Government Construction strategy mandated the use of BIM. I was sharing the platform with some other speakers and the awards were given out between the talks.

I was on after the interval so nervously fumbled my notes with thumbs dancing on my phone tweeting away as I watched the other speakers before me.

There was a definite biking and outdoors twist to the talks and I found them engaging and entertaining. There were about 40 in the room and many more watching online as it was held as part of London Social Media week.

Richard Saxon, the UK’s BIMbassador was up first talking about Growth through BIM, selling UK PLC BIM skills to the rest of the world and gave us the news we are now 2nd behind Finland in our BIM maturity. (he also told me during coffee that the Pozzoni / Kier scheme Poynton High School was shown in Brussels the day before!)

Cycling Journalist Carlton Reid then spoke about the UK bike scene which was well received before a great presentation by Phil Sorrel on GeoBlogging, a few of us in the room immediately seeing possible practical applications for this technology on Construction sites.

Nick Katz talked about Honest Buildings, a crowd sourced platform for connecting business opportunities and building data and Tim Oldman spoke on the Leesman index, a measurement of workplace productivity to feed into evidence based design.

The closing address was by Liz Male, chair of Trustmark who spoke about the Green Deal and the implications of a recent omission to the legislation regarding ancillary works.

My piece seemed to go down well, I used my normal style of big images, trying to lighten the tone of what can normally be a fairly dry subject as I bounced around BIM, Bikes and Blogs, ending with a call for more use of project collaboration extranets and use of open IDs and encourage this.

Of course every awards ceremony has a party and we all trooped across the road to the College Arms for a Beer or 3 of course all checking in with Four Square as we crossed the street!