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...

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"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

First southern training trip over

And all I've got to show for it are a few blisters and a newly perforated kayak hatch cover after a Kea found it irresistible.

Oh and a 4:15 run and a 4:00 paddle ... Let's hope the river is running over 100 cumecs on race day!
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Adidas sting in Stirling prologued

So the evening was spent hanging around Stirling castle, spectacular venue, pish weather! It had been lovely all day (which at least meant good light when channel 4 came to film us :-) ) and decided to rain from about 3 hours before the prologue to half an hour before. This left the cobblestones and off road sections a little interesting.

Our issues started before the race, when some little shits thought out was funny to chuck stuff at us when unloading the van. Andy Mitchell stepped back to look at where the missiles were coming from and fell over his bike, gashing his calf and bending his rear mech. A bit of fiddling and it seemed to be shifting ok.

I was first off on a 3k run around the base of the castle, my good start keeping me clear of people falling over at the 180 degree downhill left hander going from cobbles to stairs. Unfortunately i then went backwards, and was soon chicked. Thankfully so was everyone else but one speedy orienteer, and I came in about 8th or 9th.

Andy w took off on the orienteering leg closely followed by Fi McBride, and they had a good leg, coming back in together in about 5th.

Then it was our Fi's turn, heading out on a MTB leg that all the top British teams were sending their ladies on. Thankfully ours is better at navigation, so she came in about 4th having done a slightly shorter loop than some of the others, though she was also displaying gravel rash, a scuffed rear quick release, and a smashed shoe buckle. Thankfully she is the same size feet as Rachel, so a shoe swap has occurred.

So Andy m went out on his repaired bike in sight of the leaders on the longest leg. The tracking web site didn't show him making good progress, so there was some concern as running chick's team mate came in to take the win (the prologue was open to the public, so this team wasn't doing the whole range). This was alleviated a couple of minutes later when Andy rode up the hill with Ant Emmett from mountain hard wear to share the full racer's win.

Not a bad start :-)

I'm racing in team 17, FGS nectar.

Live tracking should be up at http://live.adidas-ar.com/

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Sorry about any Swype induced spelling issues

Racing again

So the adidas terrex sting in Stirling starts in about 82 hours, and the live tracking will be linked from http://www.adidas-AR.com/

I'm racing (without Rach or Sherlock) as part of team For Goodness Shakes Nectar. Fi McBryde is in FGS Superberry.

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

Champions of the wurldz!

The wainuiomata 6 hr wurldz that is!

Rach and i played pass the Sherlock today out at Wainui (ably assisted by jo, thanks a lot jo!) at a 6 hr MTB relay race.

These things are always hard work as you go from sitting around doing nothing to full noise for a lap or two, but at least we managed to win the mixed duo class with 14 laps, 2 laps down on the best male team ... Not bad for a couple of old multi sporters :-)

Pre-fueling for t walk

The wee Welly winkies prepare for 24 hours with coffee and pies in springfield

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Sorry about any Swype induced spelling mistakes

Not quite this dumb!

With Rach only being 2 weeks post major abdominal surgery, and sherlock still being a little small for racing (easy to tow you say?) I had to look outside the family for team mates.

Oh sod it, this report has taken too long to write as usual, so suffice it to say that Barryn and I enetered the Big Bang Adventure Race near Otaki and managed to lead it from about 90 secs in all the way to the end, building up a comfortable margin throughout the cycle, run/ bush trek and river tubing event.

This was BB's first race and it went off very well, getting coverage in the local rag the week after, and attracting well over 150 people.

Thanks to Barryn for coming out to play and to Stephen and Belinda for coming out to crew, thankfully the weather was pleasant for hanging around Otaki Forks.

And when I got back to the hospital to go and see the fandamily, someone had parked a car in the hospital - maybe they should have paid more attention to the signs!

Grumble!

Half an hour behind the leader yesterday was tempered somewhat by the fact
that he'd run on the same map the week before, but today's mispunch robbed
me of 3rd in the sprint race which was all my own dumb fault ;-(

Relay this afternoon just for fun, and then we'll see how the long course
goes tomorrow.

Holding the baby

While Rach stays in Wellington cooking Sherlock (2 months to go <gulp>) I'm
taking a well earned break(!) in aussie, hanging out by Lake Hume with
about 30 kiwis here for the Oceania MTBO champs.

For the foot-o champs last week they had GPS trackers on the competitors so
that you could see all their silly mistakes from your desk, check out
http://www.oceaniamtbo.com/ to see if they're doing the same for us on
friday, saturday and sunday.

FART II?

The great american RV migration north seems to be happening at the moment, and we are seeing some magnificent (ridiculous?) Examples, maybe something like this would pass muster as our next race vehicle?

Honeymoon time

It turns out that hixy was right, he said that I wouldn't let a little thing like a cracked rib stop me from riding whistler :-)

Whistler bike co. supplied me with a giant DH glory and I got 6 runs in in 4 and a bit hours. The best riding was very much like welly track, but scaled up to need the glory's 8" of travel, and my only crash was on snow on the very top run.

Rach took an anthem out for a spin round some of the xc trails and had dinner waiting on my return, so a pretty good afternoon all up :-)

Who said wind energy was clean?

Returning from the superb john randal/ simon kennett planned 2 hour score MTBO event at Meridian Energy's West Wind wind farm, it was pretty obvious which one of us had stuck to the controls on the roads, and which had taken on all the cross country clippers.

Despite her condition having kept her off a mountain bike for a few months now, Rach couldn't turn down the opportunity to get out onto this private land for this event, a view obviously shared by many as the turnout of over 90 showed. She therefore teamed up with her friend Jude to introduce Jude to MTBO, while I attempted to maintain a position near the top of the men's open field.

With my 2 main competitors running the event, and with round 1's winner Tim Wilding not here, it was going to be a straight fight with vet Ian Paintin. We both headed South along the ridge and collected the first 2 controls within sight of each other, before Ian headed down to pick up a control (33) that I had decided not to get.

4 controls later and I was regretting my game plan - less than a 1/4 of the time used up and over a 1/4 of the controls passed, and with only 1 big climb in the route, I realised it was going to be possible to clear this course! I altered my route to include all of the other controls that I had previously discounted, and other than wasting about 3 minutes looking for 37 - it was in the right place, but was the only control that wasn't immediately visible - was being pretty efficient, and had put a small lead on Ian.

There was an 'allowable route' that took us down to the sea, that was great fun, and now I know where it goes will be worth going back to see if it is 100% rideable. About here I saw Rach and Jude about to walk up the bit I had run down, so I warned them about 37.

A number of controls were laid out along a slushy valley floor, and the out and back nature of this section meant I got to see that I'd put about 6 minutes into Ian, but I was confident he would still clear the course and it would take me more than 6 minutes to get out to 33 and back!

After doing the loop at the very north of the map I figured I would head out to 33 if I had 10 minutes left, and as I came back towards the finish that was exactly what I had, so I screamed through the S/F area where people were already finishing ( sorry guys! ), cocked up leaving, and then got my head down.

Unfortunately 33 turned out to be 12 minutes away, so I got back 2 minutes late, and later on realised I had been so focussed on 33 that I had omitted an easy 11.

Ian missed the 20 pointer near the start in order to get back with 5 seconds to spare, so neither of us quite cleared the course, and he ended up taking the win by 10 points - I reckon I would have cleared it with about 4 mins to spare if I'd got 33 in the first place, so hopefully lesson learned - if you're going to be anywhere near clearing, pick everything up early and drop later ones!

Rachel and Jude were waiting for me at the finish and Rach was Buzzing, she'd had a great time back on 'Petal', and they'd cleared about 2/3rds of the course, having plenty of fun and finishing in the top half of the field ( they actually got 620 )

Results at http://www.mapsport.co.nz/hvoc/hvoc.html, commentary at http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=236295939728164, and doubtless there will soon be an article at http://sifter-writes-bikes.blogspot.com/.

Thanks John, Simon, Michael etc for a great course, and Meridian for the access!

West coast fun

Not really tlj related, but mark hearfield and I were part of a group of 21 mainly wellingtonians that headed down to the south island to ride the heaphy track.

We managed to get a weekend of great weather which is always a surprise on the west coast, and great fun was had by all. The track was pretty boggy and a lot harder work than expected but well worth the effort, with a group heading in the opposite direction getting caught out, and having to spend the night in the hut we had fully booked out.

Recommended for the fit, or for people willing to take 3 or more days over it.

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Burglars?

Rachel and I have recently had to gives back our 2 biggest trophies-the women's crazy man individual which is now with Elina Ussher, and the national rogaine champs which is now Emma and Guy de Lacey.

As we've been doing very little other than getting married this year, we decided to enter the annual city safari rogaine in the 3 hour category, and after making good use of the real time system and rach's smart phone, we cleared karori and tinakori to win by a healthy margin.