{"id":1316,"date":"2010-04-10T13:32:12","date_gmt":"2010-04-10T12:32:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/?p=1316"},"modified":"2010-04-14T14:44:35","modified_gmt":"2010-04-14T13:44:35","slug":"mtbo-camp-middle-long-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/?p=1316","title":{"rendered":"MTBO Camp- Middle \/ Long Race"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>Another journey south took us to the venue for a middle\/long race this morni\"\"<\/a>ng. The start was on a pretty foot bridge over a stream, next to an historic museum village with old houses, workshops and barns. There was\u00a0bright sunshine, but a cold wind blowing.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Photo by Maria Cutova<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There was more direction changing, route choice and fine navigation required in today’s race, but also much, much more climb. The\u00a0course required careful route choice to avoid unnecessary ascents and descents and caught many out.<\/p>\n

In hindsight my route to number 1 was not the quickest, but I essentially played it safe, not wanting\u00a0any more\u00a0mistakes on a first control. However, my route choice to number 2 using the road was very slow at the end, losing me too much climb and\u00a0forcing me to get off and push up to the control site. After that I got into the flow and rode the rest of the race fairly cleanly, pleased that I seemed to pick the better route choices, staying away from the tricky, slow-to-ride tracks.<\/p>\n

The event was marred for me, though,\u00a0when I realised on the way into number 14 that I’d lost my Garmin! I promptly rode straight past\u00a0the control\u00a0and had to turn and go back up the hill.<\/p>\n

I finished strongly and am happy with 34th place, but the steep hills played to the strength of the Danes and Russians, pulling them 20 minutes ahead.<\/p>\n

I went back out for another 45 minutes retracing my “steps” & looking for\u00a0my lost GPS, but to no avail…….<\/p>\n

A very tired Stodge got back to\u00a0the patiently waiting lift back to the hotel, but not before the suggestion of\u00a0a tasty hot dog from the local cafe.<\/p>\n

The area was quite similar to Cannock Chase in some ways and I enjoyed the changes\u00a0in pace the hills provided, and some exciting fast and technical descents to the river. The course looping in the area near the finish was very difficult to read, though, and at one point I found myself on a beeline for the wrong control only to end up looking down on the control site I needed on a parallel track just 50 metres away. I was a good boy, though, and retraced my route rather than cutting through the forest.<\/p>\n

Another great MTBO area, another well-planned course.<\/p>\n

Update: My GPS was found by Lasse Brun’s Mum. Many thanks to her for making my evening.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0 \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0 \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another journey south took us to the venue for a middle\/long race this morning. The start was on a pretty foot bridge over a stream, next to an historic museum village with old houses, workshops and barns. There was\u00a0bright sunshine, but a cold wind blowing. There was more direction changing, route choice and fine navigation … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “MTBO Camp- Middle \/ Long Race”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,9,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-competitions","category-mountain-biking-cycling","category-orienteering"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1316"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1379,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1316\/revisions\/1379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}