{"id":339,"date":"2009-01-25T23:09:54","date_gmt":"2009-01-25T22:09:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/?p=339"},"modified":"2009-01-26T13:05:26","modified_gmt":"2009-01-26T12:05:26","slug":"event-report-dark-white-winter-league-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/?p=339","title":{"rendered":"Event Report – Dark & White Winter League # 5"},"content":{"rendered":"

The weather forecast and note on the Dark & White<\/a> website warning of snow, made me wonder if I’d even get to the event, but dawn brought good conditions for rnd #5 of the winter league, centred on Macclesfield Forest.
\n\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>I decided to have a good look at the map rather than dashing off this time as there were lots of\u00a0route options available.<\/p>\n

Deciding I didn’t fancy riding into the wind on the open moor and wanting a downhill finish off I went up towards Teggs Nose on an a clockwise route. On the way to #10 I was so engrossed in sorting out the finer points of my route I wasted 2 mins by riding straight past it. The climb up Teggs Nose by #10\u00a0has some\u00a0history for me. I bonked on it at the end of my first ever Trailquest back in 2005 and was late back, suffice to say the reason I missed the control was I\u00a0climbed it much much faster this time \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

I rode well, keeping an eye on the time and really thought at one point getting all but one of them was a possibility, however on the way to #2\u00a0on a slippery singletrack\u00a0I had a minor off and bent the rear mech hanger slightly. Other than not being able to get top gear and a bit of chain noise\u00a0things seemed OK so I carried on.<\/p>\n

The crosswind on the Cat & Fiddle road was scary, but it was more uncomfortable when I turned to face it on the way to #15.<\/p>\n

Then came the nightmare every mountain biker dreads, a major mechanical miles from anywhere. At the top\"\"<\/a>\u00a0of a very steep climb out of a farm the chain sucked<\/a> badly and the rear mech hanger<\/a> finally broke \ud83d\ude41 Arrowed on the map<\/p>\n

As this is now the third time on\u00a0this bike over the years\u00a0it is lucky I carry a spare. It’s one of those irreplaceable get you home bits that is mostly bike specific, so you can’t scrounge one. The heart rate and GPS plot shows I lost 6mins 20 secs, which to be honest isn’t bad considering, although my hands were freezing when I finished.<\/p>\n

So back on the bike I was then on a serious mission to get back on time. I did a fair bit of\u00a0head scratching\u00a0but decided to stick to the original plan and bag the points. I\u00a0however stupidly\u00a0wasted another 4 mins by playing safe on\u00a0a map correction as\u00a0I was unsure of a right of way, so rode around on the roads.<\/p>\n

The final climb back over to the finish was painful with me giving it everything, I necked a gel just before I started up it and I think its what kept me going.<\/p>\n

So I ended up just over 7 mins late, losing me 11 points after riding 49km with 1650m climb. Looking at the results,\u00a0if I hadn’t had the mechanical I would have probably won. I am\u00a0really chuffed\u00a0with the result and now seem to be able to keep up with the big boys ! The hours of winter training now seems to be paying off.
\nFull results\u00a0available here<\/a><\/p>\n

Mark Stodgell ( Stodge )<\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The weather forecast and note on the Dark & White website warning of snow, made me wonder if I’d even get to the event, but dawn brought good conditions for rnd #5 of the winter league, centred on Macclesfield Forest. I decided to have a good look at the map rather than dashing off this … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Event Report – Dark & White Winter League # 5”<\/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":[13,9,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-competitions","category-mountain-biking-cycling","category-orienteering"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339","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=339"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":360,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339\/revisions\/360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}