Category: Cycling

The Sprint distance final was held in the town of Vyborg near the border with Finland. This old town with a long military history promised some close racing on its cobbled streets and parks.

The starts followed a great opening ceremony with dancing drummer girls and the normal speeches which was held inside the medieval fort.

I had done a fair bit of research on Vyborg using Yandex maps, a sort of Russian google street view and felt as we drove into the town I knew the place quite well already.

Out of the start I rode well through the first 4, a little surprised perhaps at some of the obstacles we faced, but taking it fairly slowly nailing the controls. At 5 I lost some time though, not seeing the NW route into the control which forced me to run up the steps. Having lost my flow I then proceeded to ride back towards number 4 but recovered it in time not to lose too much but the two mistakes together cost me about a minute.

Then came the first signs that the town was not a closed to traffic as we had been promised. I was soon jumping traffic lights and avoiding cars and pedestrians as I came up the steps into 7. Then came the scary steps. Coming out of 9 it was either ride 3 flights of fairly steep steps or get off and carry. I rode them but it was right at the edge of my comfort zone.

I had to overake a lorry and more cars on the way to 10 and then overtake it again to 11 where we changed our maps for the final section of the course.

After a few controls in some open heathland we plunged into an area of garages and huts, not at all well mapped. After a little hesitation I (like a few others) dived down an alleyway not seeing it had . A wall marked block the way. The trouble was the wall wasn’t a wall it was a 3 metre drop, no barrier, nothing. I skidding to a halt inches from the edge and looked down. We had been told the previous evening unlike in foot sprint O we could go down these if we were brave enough. I grabbed the bike a jumped…… big mistake, I landed heavily winding myself and perhaps bruising my ribs (we will see tomorrow on that one).

I limped with breathing laboured to the control but was a bit out of it. I then nearly crashed a second time hitting a huge hump on the pavement but just managed to hang onto the bike one handed using my knee as a brake on the front wheel.

I then messed up the next few controls until the taped route to the spectator control which after a few more near misses with cars I punched just ahead of Ruslan Gristan and raced the final couple to the finish with him finally opening my legs up to a proper sprint speed.

I had hoped that with a clean ride I could have made the top 20 in this race but my early mistake and then the fall meant I was well down.

However I did wear a headcam so once edited ill post it on youtube, possibly leaving out the portaloo visit at the start !

As always travelling with a bike brings is challenges. At Gatwick we were marched off to have our bike bags weighed at the oversize luggage check in before we were formally allowed to get our boarding passes. Luckily I thought we had 23kgs so when I found out we had 25 I squirrelled a few of the heavier items out of my hand luggage to take it to 25. This was fortuitous as they then proceeded to weigh our hand luggage, oops, I was way over but a smile and shrug got me through without any payment.

And so to Russia. Our first brush with very slow official formality we were to find time and time again was car hire. It took nearly two hours! After that it was an unscheduled visit to the centre of St Petersburg where we relocated on the Winter Palace before finally getting the right road out towards Vyborg and our accommodation which was a very pleasant surprise. Its a sort of upmarket center parcs without the swimming pool. The food is great and we could not ask for anything, its all provided. The lengthy process’s of form filling and judicious use of huge rubber stamps continued though and our passports whisked away to ???

Daylight saw us to be in a gorgeous sandy forest with huge pine trees stretching straight and true towards the sky. Another pleasant surprise was the SFR punching system which turns out to be much easier to use than EMIT which it is closest competitor. After a leisurely morning we completed the model events before a visit back to the forest for some team building and photo taking before a quick ride round the sprint model area. We even have a bike wash outside our block which I had to use a little earlier than I intended after riding through what we can only assume was Bear poo, it went everywhere and stunk

Tomorrow brings our first race the Sprint in Vyborg.

Some photos here https://picasaweb.google.com/mark.stodgell/EuropeanChamps2011?authuser=0&feat=directlink

Over in Russia we will be using the SFR punching system, not EMIT or Sportident.
Ive always found EMIT hard work on a bike, mainly due to its size, although after a whole week of it in Denmark last year I was starting to get more confident with faster punches.

In Russia we have 2 days to get used to a totally new system for us – SFR.

There are various versions of it, but we seem to be using one which is more like EMIT than SI in that a brick has to be place the correct way round in a shoe and it has a backup paper punch card. There is also a separate pod which goes on the fork of the bike, I assume for rolling finishes. With the Sprint being the first event I think the new system could be interesting, lets hope we get lots of time to practice.

Lots of photos of the IOF advisor trying it here http://fotki.yandex.ru/users/o-sport-ru/album/167417/?