{"id":2865,"date":"2011-06-20T16:22:21","date_gmt":"2011-06-20T15:22:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/?p=2865"},"modified":"2011-06-20T16:28:33","modified_gmt":"2011-06-20T15:28:33","slug":"world-cup-mtbo-sweden-long-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/?p=2865","title":{"rendered":"World Cup MTBO Sweden – Long Race"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The Swedish organisers tried a new format for their World Cup Long Race, a mass start race with butterfly routes rather than gaffelling. The start was chaos, riders blitzing off from the gun going every which way but the right way. I couldn’t even find the first control on the dense 1:20,000 map, let alone navigate to it.<\/p>\n

As everyone was on the same course, I just got into the pack and followed, desperately trying to get into the map. Eventually from the compass I realised the pack was going in the wrong direction. I stopped on a bank and promptly fell over backwards, the bike on top of me down a bank. Picking myself up I relocated and gunned it down a swoopy decent then back up to the control just as the pack was streaming out. On the way to number two I got dropped, I just couldn’t stay with the pace in what essentially for the first 6 controls was an XC race. I missed a junction on the way to 3 and then had a clean ride from then on, though mainly on my own.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>There were some huge route choice legs, but the riding to the north was fairly boring. On the first butterfly loop we encountered the first of two massive staircases, some 130 steps climbing a steep hill. Bikes on shoulders they were punishing, with screaming quads at the top. I made a stupid routechoice error on number 13 which was in a quarry. I took a short cut through the forest from the road and was faced with a 25 m very steep quarry side to negotiate. I slipped, slithered and skidded my way down the bonkers slope, boulders and stones flying everywhere. To cap it the floor of the quarry was sandy and slow. My little adventure lost me 30 secs to just cruising round on the road \ud83d\ude41<\/p>\n

As we turned for home the riding and navigation got more interesting, though at 1:20 thou the map was sometimes unreadable.<\/p>\n

I took a lucky route choice under some pylons which was faster than I thought it would be and then crossed a fantastic little suspension bridge. It was just three 6 inch wide planks wide but with lovely tyre swallowing sized gabs between them.<\/p>\n

A family had stopped on the other side to let me cross, buoying me on with shouts of up,up,up,up. I had to try and ride it so kept my eyes firmly on the other side and zoomed across. Only then did I notice the flight of steps at the other end. I clattered down them to a round of applause, but turning the corner I was faced with the other thigh burning stair climb up to the plateau some 40 metres above.<\/p>\n

I held it together through the last butterfly and on to the finish but my legs were very tired at the end and I was well down in 53rd. I think the format did not go down particularly well with the riders and I doubt it will appear again, the normal lapped forking method being some much better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Swedish organisers tried a new format for their World Cup Long Race, a mass start race with butterfly routes rather than gaffelling. The start was chaos, riders blitzing off from the gun going every which way but the right way. I couldn’t even find the first control on the dense 1:20,000 map, let alone … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “World Cup MTBO Sweden – Long Race”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2867,"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-2865","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\/2865","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=2865"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2865\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2869,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2865\/revisions\/2869"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}