Nopesport

bruce duncan reports...

MTB Orienteering

Saturday saw the 3rd round of the Peel Land Surveys Mountain Bike Orienteering Series, this race being held in Sherwood Pines, venue of the JOK chasing sprint, and home to miles of brambles.

The weather was ok, rain was threatened, but stayed off for the duration of the race, however rain in the previous few days had made the course very muddy.

Sherwood Pines has a much greater path/track network than Grizdale, where I competed in my first MTB-O race, so I was looking forward to the increased reliance on navigation. However after a steady start, I managed to miss a wee path near number 2, and with lots of the riding of very muddy bumpy single track, reading the map was very tricky, usually necessitating stopping.

I lost almost 4 minutes at this control, and then a further minute when I slid into a tree and had to give my chain some ‘tweaking’ to get it to actually go round my cogs.

After these two mishaps I managed to find a faster gear, and having been 4 minutes down on Andy Simpson at number 5, I managed to come into the finish about 20 seconds ahead of him.

The course was really good fun, lots of split second route choice decisions, often with the wrong choice costing up to a minute due to the muddiness and bumpiness of the tracks.

Steve Heading won by a clear 4 minute margin from 2nd and 3rd, with myself and Andy Simpson another 2 minutes down. Steve was clean and very fast, a past master at the Polaris and sponsored by ‘Whyte Bikes’ was in the lead all the way round. Looking at the splits after the race I saw that I was close or faster than him on almost all the splits, apart from my mistakes, so he is beatable, but you have to be on top of you game to get him.

Another thoroughly enjoyable day, if somewhat muddy, but with a fair turn out of people it made for good competition, and we didn’t have to go through any brambles at all!!!!
Cheers to Dave and Jenny.

Results
1 Steve Heading TCA 61.48
2 Liam Corner TCA 65.43
3 Killian Lomas Peel Adventure 65.58
4 Bruce Duncan Grampian 67.45
5 Andy Simpson TCA 68.03
6 Phil Winskill Dark Peak 69.14

"the duncan"