{"id":2583,"date":"2011-04-12T22:50:27","date_gmt":"2011-04-12T21:50:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/?p=2583"},"modified":"2011-04-13T09:33:27","modified_gmt":"2011-04-13T08:33:27","slug":"mtbo-camp-long-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/?p=2583","title":{"rendered":"MTBO Camp – Long race"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Wind and sand, in fact so much a land yacht would have been more useful than a mountain bike. Stopped at the traffic lights even the minibus was being blown forwards by the powerful gusts, and after parking it was like being in sand blasting booth.<\/p>\n

The morning was spent training for the long distance race in the afternoon. We all cut it short, worn down by the sandy conditions and vicious winds, and escaped to McDonalds, the only warm ‘cafe’ we could find for lunch.<\/p>\n

Following a well earned McFlurry I felt ready for anything lining up for the start of the long race, which was only 15km due to the sandy conditions. I started at a run on a horrible, sandy track, but got going onto the better tracks and felt I rode really well. I struggled slightly with the map on number 3, the tracks seemingly not joining up as indicated but I soon relocated and was then joined by GB newbie, Dan Mathers, for a few controls. Luckily he was there to see me nail probably the best bunny hop I’ve done in years, over a log, which but a big smile on my face. The riding in the first part of the course was excellent with lots of technical single tracks (even if the map was a little ropey) and we were sheltered from the wind.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I lost about a minute or so on the way in to 10 in the complex path network but got a good clean route somehow to 11 where I caught Alan. We both slithered our way down a very steep sandy ride before the long leg across the map and the turn for home and back into the wind. I made a silly mistake taking an unmarked track on the second last, and Alan pulled back ahead. Punching the final control I took a risky route choice down a sandy track rather than out and round the road which was a mistake as the going was really tough, but throughout the course you won some and lost some to the unpredictable sandy ridability.<\/p>\n

I felt fairly pleased with the race, feeling much better, my cold pretty much nearly gone. I was even more pleased to see the results – 25th, mid-table, top Brit and 16 mins down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wind and sand, in fact so much a land yacht would have been more useful than a mountain bike. Stopped at the traffic lights even the minibus was being blown forwards by the powerful gusts, and after parking it was like being in sand blasting booth. The morning was spent training for the long distance … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “MTBO Camp – Long race”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2585,"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-2583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-competitions","category-mountain-biking-cycling","category-orienteering"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2583","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=2583"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2588,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2583\/revisions\/2588"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}