{"id":3150,"date":"2011-09-19T13:41:01","date_gmt":"2011-09-19T12:41:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/?p=3150"},"modified":"2011-09-19T13:41:53","modified_gmt":"2011-09-19T12:41:53","slug":"european-mtbo-champs-2011-%e2%80%93-sprint","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/?p=3150","title":{"rendered":"European MTBO Champs 2011 \u2013 Sprint"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The Sprint distance final was held in the town of Vyborg near the border with Finland. This old town with a long military history promised some close racing on its cobbled streets and parks.<\/p>\n

The starts followed a great opening ceremony with dancing drummer girls and the normal speeches which was held inside the medieval fort.<\/p>\n

I had done a fair bit of research on Vyborg using Yandex maps, a sort of Russian google street view and felt as we drove into the town I knew the place quite well already.<\/p>\n

Out of the start I rode well through the first 4, a little surprised perhaps at some of the obstacles we faced, but taking it fairly slowly nailing the controls. At 5 I lost some time though, not seeing the NW route into the control which forced me to run up the steps. Having lost my flow I then proceeded to ride \"\"<\/a>back towards number 4 but recovered it in time not to lose too much but the two mistakes together cost me about a minute.<\/p>\n

Then came the first signs that the town was not a closed to traffic as we had been promised. I was soon jumping traffic lights and avoiding cars and pedestrians as I came up the steps into 7. Then came the scary steps. Coming out of 9 it was either ride 3 flights of fairly steep steps or get off and carry. I rode them but it was right at the edge of my comfort zone.<\/p>\n

I had to overake a lorry and more cars on the way to 10 and then overtake it again to 11 where we changed our maps for the final section of the course.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>After a few controls in some open heathland we plunged into an area of garages and huts, not at all well mapped. After a little hesitation I (like a few others) dived down an alleyway not seeing it had . A wall marked block the way. The trouble was the wall wasn’t a wall it was a 3 metre drop, no barrier, nothing. I skidding to a halt inches from the edge and looked down. We had been told the previous evening unlike in foot sprint O we could go down these if we were brave enough. I grabbed the bike a jumped…… big mistake, I landed heavily winding myself and perhaps bruising my ribs (we will see tomorrow on that one).<\/p>\n

I limped with breathing laboured to the control but was a bit out of it. I then nearly crashed a second time hitting a huge hump on the pavement but just managed to hang onto the bike one handed using my knee as a brake on the front wheel.<\/p>\n

I then messed up the next few controls until the taped route to the spectator control which after a few more near misses with cars I punched just ahead of Ruslan Gristan and raced the final couple to the finish with him finally opening my legs up to a proper sprint speed.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I had hoped that with a clean ride I could have made the top 20 in this race but my early mistake and then the fall meant I was well down.<\/p>\n

However I did wear a headcam so once edited ill post it on youtube, possibly leaving out the portaloo visit at the start !<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Sprint distance final was held in the town of Vyborg near the border with Finland. This old town with a long military history promised some close racing on its cobbled streets and parks. The starts followed a great opening ceremony with dancing drummer girls and the normal speeches which was held inside the medieval … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “European MTBO Champs 2011 \u2013 Sprint”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3152,"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-3150","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\/3150","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=3150"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3156,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3150\/revisions\/3156"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}