{"id":1785,"date":"2010-07-18T08:16:05","date_gmt":"2010-07-18T07:16:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/?p=1785"},"modified":"2010-07-19T13:08:53","modified_gmt":"2010-07-19T12:08:53","slug":"world-championships-mtbo-relay-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/?p=1785","title":{"rendered":"World Championships MTBO Relay 2010"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>As we lined up for the start I knew that\u00a0with my big mapboard I could get away quickly, though I was a little surprised to be in second place at the bottom of the first descent. As we got onto the first singletrack I was buzzed left and right by two overtaking riders and this, togehter with the pressure of being put in GB1, upset my concentration. I turned left instead of right going into the first control, getting confused by the two football pitches, losing time and ended up at the back of the field. I hadn’t lost much time so got stuck into the long climb up to number 2 giving it my all, trying to close down the gap. I managed to pull past a couple of teams but just as I caught the chasing pack again most of them turned back down the hill, having an\u00a0shorter gaffled control. I ground on up the hill to my control feeling very demoralised before also turning back down. We then had some fast descents. I nearly lost it on a corner (see headcam footage), the higher tyre pressures I was runni\"\"<\/a>ng losing grip on the loose surface. I had to straighten up the bike and head for outside of the apex trying to scrub off as much speed as possible until finally committing to the turn amongst the vegetation on the edge. We then weaved our way through farm land picking up controls until eventually we had another control in a small village. Although after losing time on the previous races in villages and going very cautiously riding up through it I soon lost contact with the dense alley network and fell back on contours which got me into the control cleanly if a little hesitantly.
\nI took the safe fast route down a road to the next, taking time to rest my legs and have a gel in readiness for the final steep climb after the spectator control. I tossed my water bottle on the spectator loop and got stuck into the ascent. We then had a bonkers-loose downhill before I lost another 20 seconds or so taking a bad route choice to the penultimate control, finding some mud in this dry landscape !<\/p>\n

Handing over to Andy Conn I was quite a few minutes down on GB 2 rider, Andrew Windrum, who had a good ride with\u00a0the big climb favouring his stronger legs. Andy had a fantastic ride to pull us back ahead of GB 2 and up quite a few places. Ben kept up the pace on the last leg to bring us home 13th.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The men’s race had a fantastic ending when at the spectator loop Denmark’s Lasse Brun Pederson had caught Russia, but Anton Foliforov kept up the pressure and brought the team home 50 seconds clear of the Danes.<\/p>\n

So for me another not so great result, although I lost only perhaps a minute on the first control and 1 more on the route choice to the penultimate my legs have just not been strong enough on the punishing climbs these Championships have thrown at us day after day.<\/p>\n

To add insult to injury\u00a0I also found when packing my bike I had broken two spokes in my front wheel on the relay too!<\/p>\n

I have only 3 days at home now before, as a family, we go to the OOcup, a 5day foot orienteering competition in Slovenia. With no bike for a week I intend to get back to my orienteering roots in some relaxed multi-day competition, before returning to training in preparation for the last World Cup races of 2010 in Italy in September. A few hill sessions might be in order I think!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As we lined up for the start I knew that\u00a0with my big mapboard I could get away quickly, though I was a little surprised to be in second place at the bottom of the first descent. As we got onto the first singletrack I was buzzed left and right by two overtaking riders and this, … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “World Championships MTBO Relay 2010”<\/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],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-competitions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1785","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=1785"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1792,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1785\/revisions\/1792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}