{"id":4469,"date":"2017-06-26T20:36:18","date_gmt":"2017-06-26T19:36:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/?p=4469"},"modified":"2017-06-26T20:36:18","modified_gmt":"2017-06-26T19:36:18","slug":"poland-cup-mtbo-world-masters-series-long","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/?p=4469","title":{"rendered":"Poland Cup \u2013 MTBO World Masters Series \u2013 Long"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The long race was to the north of the previous 2 days, characterised by very steep sided  valleys and spurs and a complete mix of track ride-ability from flat out to a shoulder carry. After my middle epic of over 90 minutes I was prepared for a long one out in the hot sun \u2013 with my camel back full and even a couple of bars tucked away just in case.<\/p>\n

We started down hill, the full sus bike was a great platform for map reading at speed but even then I could only take snatching glances, the track was really sketchy. I cut through the trees to #1 and rode well to #2 but missed the tiny turn off and had to cut through the woods after turning round. At #3 I was lucky that a stray dog took off after another rider, rather than me and at #5 I missed a single track and ended up running down a slope, digging my heels in. It was so steep if I had simply dropped the bike it would have ended up at the bottom. The climb up to #6 was awful, the map says 60 meters straight up but it felt like soo much more with the sun on my neck!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The big route choice legs that are the hallmark of the long course then began as we worked our way around the valleys before dropping down at high speed for a couple of kilometres losing 8 index contours (200 metres). Trouble was I knew from looking ahead I\u2019d be coming back up it later!
\nAfter a couple of controls in grassland, in the valley, the climb back up was brutal. I was careful to keep well over to the right in case someone was rattling down but ended up off the bike a walking a couple of times and Peter Simmonds who started 6 mins after me came storming past as we crested the hill. We turned for home and the decent back to the finish. I opened up the suspension lockouts and managed to just catch Pete on the finish line but he had beaten me by 6 mins and I was down in 5th<\/sup>.<\/p>\n

Surprisingly it was not too long in the end  ( more of a middle long) and I was only out for 99 mins but the winner took 25 minutes out of me!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The long race was to the north of the previous 2 days, characterised by very steep sided  valleys and spurs and a complete mix of track ride-ability from flat out to a shoulder carry. After my middle epic of over 90 minutes I was prepared for a long one out in the hot sun \u2013 … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Poland Cup \u2013 MTBO World Masters Series \u2013 Long”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4471,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-competitions","category-cycling","category-mountain-biking-cycling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4469","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=4469"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4469\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4472,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4469\/revisions\/4472"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}