WMS Badajoz done

So the thread that is holding this Europe trip together is following the MTB-Orienteering World Masters Series around.

Having landed in Barcelona on Wednesday, then driven 1000km across Spain, our first event was in Badajoz over the weekend.

There was a model event on Friday afternoon just to test the bikes out, followed by a sprint and long on Saturday, and a medium on Sunday.

The sprint and medium were WMS events for Rachel and Liam, all 3 events were Spanish champs for the locals, and points from all 3 events counted towards the 'Extremadura cup' as the best riders of the weekend.

WMS is 5 year age groups, but most events will be 10 year, so Rachel is competing in W40 events, but having her WMS points calculated only against other W45 riders. Similarly some of the people beating Liam in M50 may actually be accruing M55 WMS points, and therefore actually be in a different competition.

M12 is a standard grade in MTBO, and Sherlock has unfortunately just graduated out of it, so is racing M15 at a lot of events this year - including this one - so really has his work cut out for him. For example Sherlock's sprint was 5k... The same length as Nixon's long! While Sherlock had to face 15k for his long.

The Saturday morning sprint was across the road from the model event on a very similar map. Liam decided to avoid having to answer questions about why control 9 had taken over 7 minutes when it was so close to 8, by missing 10 out completely ;-( Nixon smashed his sprint, and Rachel managed a 2nd, while Sherlock got round his in about 6th.

For the afternoon long, we moved to an army training ground, which was great fun, with lots of parallel tracks, and big open areas where the tankies obviously practised their congregating and burnouts. Rachel managed to win her long convincingly, with Nixie 2nd, and the boys 6th or so.

The medium on Sunday was on another military area with a complex track network and sober vicious climbs/ descents surrounding a central stony hill/ quarry feature. Liam and Rachel's courses both started with a 5k road loop round the outside of the main features, which was handy for getting into the map. Rachel took another solid win, with Nixon in 2nd, losing all of his time before reaching the first control add he couldn't get his map onto the board, and more single digit results for Liam and Sherlock.

So a better start for Rachel than Liam, with either 2 wins or a 1 & a 2 to open her score, plus taking the Extremadura cup for the weekend. Nix lost out on his cup because of the mapboard issue, so will have a bigger one for the next event, and the other boys need to buck their ideas up.

Home!

So we've landed in Europe (Barcelona to be precise), and after a bit of faffing, have picked up our home for the next 4 months.

The garage thankfully takes all 4 bikes fully assembled, along with everything else it needs to, but i am being reminded of how long it took me to sort that van out to really work for us.

I'm also finding out just how lucky we were with the layout of the van we had in the UK - while this one is actually a tiny bit bigger, it feels more cramped inside... Just what we need with 2 boys that have grown since last time we were in a van ;-)

And we're off

The European campaign begins - 6 world masters series MTBO events and O-ringen will be keeping us busy over the next few months.

Hopefully this lot will fit in the camper van... 

Just checking

Seeing if the auto-feed from Email still works ....

And if it strips my email footer...

--

"Things turn out the best for people who make the best of the way things turn out." -- John Wooden/ Art Linkletter

Another good weekend in Ohakune

We've just returned from another enjoyable weekend in the middle of the north island, competing in the inaugural running of the Ruapehu Express.

This community run event has 55 and 21 km mountain bike events plus a couple of run options starting at various locations and ending in Ohakune at the base of the mountain.

The mountain bike rides take in heaps of restricted access land including sections of the Rangipo desert army training grounds, which seemed like a good enough reason for a road trip.

And well worth it the trip was, with the event being really well run, and Rachel bringing home a little souvenir.

www.mtbocarnival.com

Rachel and I finally got to don NZ ferns this week as we rode in a NZ vs Australia match comprising 3 of the 6 races that made up this week's Woodhill to Whaka MTBO carnival.

Unfortunately a pulled hamstring (me, this getting old lark seems to be incompatible with beach sprints) and tummy bugs (Rachel and me, but Rachel got hit a lot harder) led to a pretty poor showing from the TLJ crew :-(

Thankfully the Australians in M40 put up an even poorer show, so i managed to scrape 3rd in class over the week, beaten by my 2 NZ team mates.

Overall a convincing win by NZ, taking out the match by 23.5 points to 8, though we get an opportunity to defend the title again this year, with a return match in Alice springs in July.

I also got to finally pick up the national champs trophy that i won in Nelson in November, so not a totally wasted trip ;-)

Crossing the country again

A race report from the 31st Speight's coast to coast :
http://elsidee.com/_Sport/_Adventure_Racing/index.php?fname=20130209-1-CoastToCoast