Round 2 of the British Mountain Bike Orienteering Score League came to Cannock Chase. Although I was organising, fellow Chaser Neil Lawford kindly planned the courses and updated the map allowing me to compete locally for the first time in years.
With the clocks changing, a houseful of friends on Saturday night for my birthday and feeling generally tired after organising and planning the middle race the day before, I stood in ZipVits car park feeling decidedly ropey but I soon felt better after a quick warm up.
There was, again, lots of interest in my Corratec Bow, many taking in the fine curves of it’s frame and having a quick squirt round the car park.
After helping Neil set up it was time for me to get going. I decided I would hits the lane network north of Rugeley first with fresh legs and really get them spinning. I pumped up the tyres really hard, knowing I could handle anything on the chase like this and as I zoomed through Armitage and in to the lanes, the Pythons were howling on the smooth tarmac. It felt great. Although I tend to ride the road bike on some of the lanes, many were new to me, as were all the off road sections. I looped back towards Rugeley, flying, feeling I might be able to clear the course.
I made a small error at #173 when I went down the wrong side of the canal, losing me a couple of minutes but then came th cluster of 3 30 point controls all on bridleways in farmland north east of Little Heywood.
Essentially the map going into #151 from Coton needs some work and the bridleway is not obvious on the ground. I, like many, lost the track and ended up jumping ditches and fences trying to get back in the right place. I’m not sure how much time I lost but it was very slow riding on the edges of ploughed fields. The going got worse on the way to #152 and the map round all the farms again needs some work and I lost time making sure I wasn’t straying onto private roads or footpaths. Coming back-out, again confused, I decided Id lost too much time and binned the last 30 pointer and headed for my comfort zone, Cannock Chase. Luckily I know this part really well so I didn’t really need to navigate, just head down and blat the hills.
I knew I was going to be late but desperately didn’t want to get later than 10 mins and start hemorrhaging all those hard won points. In the end I skidded to a halt at 3hours, 9 mins and 59 secs, phew !
I think those competitors entering the farm track section from the west probably had a slight advantage but I was very happy with my 3rd place.
Many thanks toZip Vit sport for hosting us in there car park and donating a gel to all the competitors and thanks to Neil for planning , enabling me to ride.
No GPS today so no idea how far I rode, full results on the Walton Chasers website
he centre. After a scrappy start getting into the map scale (I had been riding on 1:15,000 for the previous two days mapping) and making a couple of daft errors I hoovered up the central controls so as to keep my options open at the end. I think perhaps I should have left #6 as the tracks were awful and it involved a stiff climb back out. A particular problem in this area is the horses and the way they churn up some of the tracks. They were everywhere, and I spent a couple of frustrating minutes getting past a particularly large group on a lane going to number 4. I was going to leave number 21 but decided at the last moment to blast up and get it, which lost me about 4 minutes, as I had to double back. My route then took me up on to the moor where I was treated by amazing views in all directions and fast riding with a small tail wind. After being worried I was biting off more that I could chew I started to cover the ground much more quickly and had lots of options on the way in to get the timing right.
