At 2 am an alarm clock going off is never pleasant but it did signal the start of my tip to the European Mountain Bike Orienteering Championships 2009. Flying from Terminal 5, the new BA terminal at Heathrow was a very agreeable experience, with the fantastic steel structure flying over us as we had what was quite a cheap coffee considering where we were at 5am on a Sunday morning and handed our bikes over hoping to see them later that day. We landed on a sunny Denmark and after a small delay waiting for the bikes got our hire car (desperate packing needed to get 3 people 3 bikes and 8 bags into a Volvo V50) and headed north around Copenhagen to our accommodation at Fredensbourg Youth Hostel. The rest of the team were already comfortably placed and kindly had some lunch waiting for us before we got outside to build our bikes from their dismantled bubble-wrapped states.
Just as some drizzle started we all headed out for a shake down ride and a little MTBO technical training to get our hand in. The drizzle turn to rain and soon we and the bikes were covered in sticky sandy mud which made the gears sound horrendous. I discovered to my horror that my bike had not travelled undamaged and I had managed to get a bent front large gear ring. It was just about rideable with careful gear selection but knew it needed to be fixed before the competition started.
Back at the Youth Hostel after a quick bike wash I dismantled the chain set and accompanied by Jimmy beat the offending ring back into shape with the aid of some well chosen logs from the pile and lots of innuendo.
The boys cooked the dinner with a set of ingredients that would have made a ready steady cook chef wince.
3 tins of Tuna, 1 tin of tomatoes, 1 tin of sweetcorn, a Cup a Soup. We presented the ladies with a course menu which seemed to go down OK but i’m not sure if peppers or tomatoes won !
After an early night and a surprisingly good nights sleep I managed to wake up the entire hostel at 8 am by setting our car alarm off by leaning on the key – oops. The rest of the team went out to train on the model event map whilst I headed off to pick up Killian from the airport. The afternoon was spent back out on the training area, tuning into the 1:7500 map scale on some practice controls ready for our first race the sprint tomorrow.
I feel as if I cant have done much more in preparation, both the bike and myself are in tip top condition so I now just need to have a good clean ride.