Stodge-Blog

This years World MTBO Champs are to be held over the week of 10th – 15th August near Tel Aviv in Israel.  The week comprises of a Long Qualification, Middle Distance, Sprint, Relay and Long Final races in the forested hills surrounding the event centre at Ben Shemen Youth Village.
Competitors are facing high temperatures, the fact that the organisers are insisting on the carrying of at least a litre of fluid on most races, an indication of how much it will affect them.
Punctures from the many thorns and sharp stones are also thought to be a major issue, raising the old Tubes vs Tubeless debate amongst Team GB members. For my part (already tubeless) I will be adding ‘slime’ rather than the usual latex ‘milk’ in a bolt and braces attempt to avoid time loss.
The team are flying out British Midland on Saturday 8th August from Heathrow, the airline kindly increasing our baggage allowance in order that we can take the bikes free of charge.
Another first for many GB team members is the fact that Israeli MTBO rules state that riding off of tracks is allowed, meaning you can cut through the forest between tracks. This brings a very different approach to some route choices and is difficult to practice for in the UK.
Full details can be found at the WOC website http://www.nivut.org.il/mtbo/

I’d set myself a target of getting down to 72kgs, which happened last week 🙂 My coach Adrian’s first advice last year before I started training for the 2008 Europeans was ‘stodge we need to something about your power to weight ratio’  Well I have now and there is still a little more to come !
I thought some comparisons might be useful just to add a reminder of quite how much weight that is if I start to put it back on again.

10.5 kg is the weight of my current race mountain bike !
or
10 kg = 40 packs of Butter

or
10 kg = 10 bags of sugar

I am also going to load a rucksac with 10 KG and see what it is like to ride with !!

Some top tips on how I lost the weight :

I kept an online food diary and recorded everything I ate and any alcohol I drank.
I replaced all the ‘rubbish snacks’ with Eat Natural Bars.
For the first 3 months cut out all puddings and treats.
Vastly cut my beer / wine intake.
Oh and about 6-8 hours training a week !

Round 5 of the summer league was set in the picturesque village of Hathersage, with Stanage edge towering above it. It was all abit of a rush getting ready ( I rebuilt my bike at 10pm the night before as I hadn’t had chance since getting back from Denmark late on Sunday) and picked up Cath’s orienteering box not mine so no compass, si card or contact lenses……..
I decided to head up towards Stanage edge first so set off in the considerable heat. I made a small error coming out of the town from the car park and missed a junction up to #6 which I intended getting on the way to #2 but thought it unlikely that I would get them all in such hot conditions so decided to leave it out and carry on.
My legs were sore after the Walton Chasers club classic distance foot orienteering race of Tuesday night (I took a few scalps and won 🙂 ) but it didn’t seem to slow me down at all on the big climbs. I rode well but realised as I came South that it was a mistake to leave the control, as I cleared the course, arriving back at the start 9 mins early. 
With one league event to go another =1st would have set up the League niceley for a last race finalee but Ben Plowman is now unbeatable with 3 1st places (3 to count from 6 races) so I will have to settle for 2nd or 3rd.

results available here….

The heat again was a factor in the relay, held back down near to the middle race. I was happy to be riding 2nd leg after my middle race disaster so after taking a few photos got into the pen to await Killian who was on first leg. I got a poor start as I had to fight my way past a couple of waiting riders to get to the changeover pen and had on jump on my bike after I had been tagged losing a few seconds.
The first 400m out of the event field were tough, marshy with long grass and very bumpy but once out I got into the flow was riding and navigating well. I had a small wobble on two controls in the middle of the course perhaps losing 30 secs or so after missing a couple of track junctions but was still going well when I got to the complicated spectator area for the first time. I left the spectator control and nailed the next 5 controls riding really well until ……. 🙁

I noticed I’d just ridden them in the wrong order. There was a line leading out from the spectator area on the map and with the map upside down I just had not noticed that I had gone to 24 not 18. I skidded to a halt in a public carpark, cursed, collected my thoughts for 15 secs then roared away to redo this loop in the right order. The atmosphere going through the spectator area the second time was great and I then caught our Spanish rival on the next control. I then had a great head to head race with him, outsprinting him over the line before handing over to Jimmy on the last leg. Unbelivably I had not lost us any places since changeover but we would have had a much higher placing If I had not been a muppet ( I perhaps lost between 9 and 11 mins).

Jimmy kept our place and had an alomost identical sprint for the line with the Spanish teams 3rd leg rider and again pipped him to the post.

After yesterdays disaster and the fact that the Long is not my best discipline I simply decided to just ride hard and fast and see what happened today. It again was very hot but the map promised much more of a navigational challenge than I had seen in the past on the Long. I started well making no mistakes, riding well and from the radio control splits I was fastest Brit at #11. I was a bit scrappy on one leg but only made one proper mistake just before the  spectator control where I perhaps lost 45 secs taking a wrong junction. I was carrying 2 lites of SIS PSP so did not need the feed station but then fluffed the map exchange. From what I had read and been told I was expecting it to be taped from the feed station and I wasted probably another 40 secs relocating and finding the control. The second half of the course went well and other than skidding past one track junction had a clean ride. To  top it I did a perfect standing punch and nailed the finish getting = fastest split with Jimmy again.
I really felt that other than the two small errors I had a good ride and was pleased to see I was much further up the field and just pipped fellow Brit and long favourite Jimmy by a minute.

Part of being Team Manager is to submit a report every night to British Orienteering. Here is an alternative version to the comments about the mens I found on my machine when I came back from dinner !

Alternative edition: The men want us to ignore their results because ‘they are rubbish’ says Jimmy ‘Afghan’ Taylor. ‘Yeah, we performed pretty shockingly and are generally crap, but we did have some good controls’ says Killian ‘Flower’ Lomas who got beaten by a girl on two splits including to the spectator control because he was posing for the cameras but no-one took a picture L. Mark Stogell took the boom or bust approach usually adopted by Jimmy and finished bottom of the trio! Jimmy ‘Afghan’ Taylor occupied himself post race by admiring the picture Stodge took which ‘makes my legs look big like an elephant, you want to see me in Skins I look like Errol Flynn in the Crimson Pirate only without the sword skills’.

Hmmmmm….. not a good day for stodge.
I had quite an early start but managed to get into Breakfast early and arrived at the event in good time. It was a 7.5km ride to the start and it was very hot but I was nicely hydrated at the start and felt OK, however I’did feel a bit ‘hasseled’ though nothing I could put my finger on at the time.
I started OK taking a safe route to #1 and was planning ahead well and working hard. I made a daft mistake coming out of #3 losing about a minute where I was trying to map memory too much when I didn’t need to (note to self for the future) but I rode the middle section of the first part of the map OK.
There were lots of primary school groups out on some sort of treasure hunt, playing cowboys and Indians. As one of the first riders through I had no choice but to shout ‘up,up,up,up’ and give a friendly smile and a wave, but as I can across more groups the shouts came the other way with lots of cheering from the enthusiastic kids, all quite surreal.
After a motorway underpass the second half of the course was very different, with short legs almost like a sprint, but with a fair bit of climb. I took a wrong track junction on the control after the spectator loop and probably lost another 45 secs but after that rode a clean race, probably losing a little time on two legs where I navigated ultra cautiously so as not to make a mistake.
So why am I not happy, well this was meant to be my best discipline and after a great result at the British Championships was looking for a top 30 but I was 10 mins down on Killian. Looking at the splits without the maps at present it looks as if I was just generally slow on nearly every leg. (-18 on team top trumps). The only thing I can put it down to was I was really hot, stressed and dehydrated last night after a long Team Leaders meeting and lots of hanging around for the opening ceremony which was late. I then unfortunately had to do some work last night for a bid document which meant I was late to bed and probably more stressed. I feel like its an excuse, but I really can’t figure out what else it could be. Killian had a great ride though and 43rd is a great position only 5 mins down.
So I am now fully prepared for tommorrow, less stresed and in a generally better shape. Im going to take a drink to the event centre and not spend the evening working. Lets hope for a better result in the Long and Relay to come.

The sprint race was set in a very small area of forest with the start, finish and spectator control area centred on a rowing club, complete with a grandstand overlooking the finish straight. I was allocated a very late start just before the ‘red’ seeded start list began which I was pleased with. I spent quite a time in the warm up area tuning in and practicing from standing punches before queuing up for the start.
I started strongly and nearly missed the first track junction but nailed the first two controls. Then came my disaster. There was an area on the map which we had been told had more tracks than marked, and I failed to recognise I was in it and hoofed off on a track in the wrong direction. It took me a while to relocate, eventually finding I had made a classic parallel error. Looking at the splits I lost approx 2.5 to 3 mins, which is enormous in sprint racing and has left me a bit disappointed as it is an error I should not had made. I was quite scrappy for the next two but re focused and put the hammer back down and got some good splits and was very pleased with my control flow, particularly at the map exchange where I got fastest Brit split by a few seconds. I made one other error, again in the dense track network around the kids bonfire area and perhaps lost another 1min – 1.5 mins but I really pulled it back overtaking a Spaniard who had caught me on the last few controls and getting fastest Brit finish split = with Jimmy.
Although I am disapointed with 64th and 10mins down I can see that extra fitness would not have counted for much today and it is really lack of MTBO practice which is the problem and we just do not have enough events on in the UK.

results available here

GB Team results

Under 20 Women
Emily Benham 4th
Helen Clayton 24th

Under 20 Men
Chris Brand Barker 29th

M21 Men
Killian Lomas 50th
Jimmy Taylor – 63rd
Mark Stodgell – 64th

W21 Women
Charlotte Summers Cocks 30th
Sarah Bayliss 41st