{"id":2911,"date":"2011-07-07T20:20:53","date_gmt":"2011-07-07T19:20:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/?p=2911"},"modified":"2011-07-07T22:59:01","modified_gmt":"2011-07-07T21:59:01","slug":"rugeley-bike-o","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/?p=2911","title":{"rendered":"Rugeley Bike O"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

As I had produced the map for this event and know the area like the back of my hand, I decided to ride non-competitively at this event but was really looking forward to my first mountain bike orienteering on Cannock Chase, home turf, for ages.<\/p>\n

From doing the map I new the weight of the points seemed to favour the north, so I\u00a0headed out that way.<\/p>\n

After a good start, although a little nettle stung, I could not find the end of the bridleway going to number 38 and ended up thrashing my way around Rugeley\u2019s less salubrious estates, which don\u2019t bear much resemblance to the OS map, before eventually doubling back for the control. I think I lost at least 6 or 7 minutes in total.<\/p>\n

From then, to be honest, I wasn\u2019t really navigating much, more route planning, though I had a wobble on Etching Hill trying to be clever going in on a different bridleway which was totally overgrown losing another minute or so.<\/p>\n

After a fantastic big ring power blast down a 6 inch strip of dried mud which snaked its way down the cornfield towards number 31, getting huge \u2018hedge rush\u2019 from the corn stalks brushing the handlebars, it was a climb back up onto the Chase. Again I knew exactly where I was going with no need to refer to the map.<\/p>\n

I seemed to be making good time so decided to take a gamble and go for the 50 pointer at the other end of the map on Cycle Shacks shop back door.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately some tea leaf had nicked it !<\/p>\n

I then careered eastwards, tucked down over the handlebars, time trial style, to try and get a control on Gentleshaw before heading for home.<\/p>\n

I ran out of steam climbing back up towards Cannock Wood and Beaudesert but a gel got me going again, skidding into the car park just 40 seconds late.<\/p>\n

Thanks to the organisers Matt from Cycle Shack and Dave Tipper, a great evening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I had produced the map for this event and know the area like the back of my hand, I decided to ride non-competitively at this event but was really looking forward to my first mountain bike orienteering on Cannock Chase, home turf, for ages. From doing the map I new the weight of the … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Rugeley Bike O”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2912,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,13,9,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cannockchase","category-competitions","category-mountain-biking-cycling","category-orienteering"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2911","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=2911"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2911\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2917,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2911\/revisions\/2917"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}