I
originally had other plans for yesterday, but it got cancelled so Pokkeltjie
& I decided to go for a fun ride on Sunday instead. Simon then suggested
this event, Peaslake MTBO that I sent out in my recent
newsletter & we decided to support this local race instead and entered as a
team.
Simon
sent out links with tips for us to read/study before Sunday, we soon realised
that our fun ride might be a little bit more serious than what we had in mind
originally.
For those
of you who know us, the team dynamics were more than interesting, 1 gadget map
reading loving male, 1 female who rides on memory & another female who are
happy to follow most of the time. :) We are all good friends and knew that this
event might put a test to our friendship. I prayed that I would be 'not' myself
just for a day & just follow the lead. :-)
On
Saturday we had a quick catch-up meeting to talk strategy & to just get an
idea of how orienteering works.
Shucks my
head wanted to explode with all the route options, there were too many
decisions to make.
On Sunday
Simon continued to quiz us in the car. One of the questions was, if it is
mid-day and the sun is on your right which side is North? I continued driving
and left Liezl to answer the question. Needless to say we all knew who the
weakest link in the team was before we even started ME! I can't even tell left
from right, how would I be able to work that one out.
Albert
joined us as a last minute add-on. He is fitter than most of us so we decided
it would be best to make one female and one male team.
Simon
kindly made us all some DIY perspex map holders by drilling holes into plastic
photo holders which we then mounted on our bikes.
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| Pokkeltjie plotting points |
At registration we received our maps with all 21
check points marked. We sat down and transferred some check points over to
another bigger picture map of our own. This was exciting, I recognized most of
the points were near areas we knew and have ridden before.
Unfortunately we didn't keep a closer look on the
time and had only 15 minutes left to plan our route, decide which check points
are not worth going to etc. There were 21 check points & we had 3 hours to
get to all of them.
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| Team work, Si plotting points & Albert working out their route |
Simon & Albert offered us their sequence of
points and due to the lack of time we decided to go with that. Unfortunately we
missed the first turn off and had trouble finding our first CP. Eventually we
saw others with maps flapping around their necks and got our first CP.
I was confident that the next check point could've
not been far away, it was almost in a straight line from there. But this one
was the elusive one. We wasted so much time cycling up and down in the same
road not finding it. So close, but yet so far. We then decided to give up hope
to find that one. We have ridden for an hour already and only had one CP. We
went over to the summit of Pitch Hill where we quickly got the next point. The
next point was located on single track, now I know a few single tracks on Pitch
Hill and didn't want to go down the wrong one as then we would need to climb
back up. Thankfully Pokkeltjie was able to tell which way was North so we
bagged this one quick-quick. We then hit it over to the bottom of BKB to grab
some points on Holmbury Hill.
Here we bagged one of the big ones very quickly
BEFORE getting horribly lost in our search for number 10. We were desperate to
find 10 as without 10 we won't be able to find 11 & 8. After many junctions
Liezl suggested going up a steep rocky climb. In my head I hoped that it would
be worth going up there. It was! Not too far away we saw the tiny grass
triangle with the bunting on marking CP10. We blitzed down the wide fire road to pick up 11
before going left in search of 8. I knew 8 was potentially going to be near one
of the other memorable trees that I get teased about. Thankfully I saw some
people to our right and we found 8. We took a single track section we know and
did with Richard from All
Biked Up back to Peaslake and got back with 8 minutes to
spare.
The winners of this event have done it plenty of
times before and we can tell that there are some really fit people out there
that are able to combine their fitness & map reading skills very well. The
Men’s Winner cleared the course in 2:10! #Machine!
I am glad we were able to support an event hosted
by the community of our local weekend playground. In all honesty I think I
prefer a way marked route, but it was good to do something outside my comfort
zone & I am walking away knowing that I can learn the following from this
event.
TC’s Tips & lessons learnt:
1. Buy the same map for each team member so both
are on the same page
2. Keep an eye on the time before you start
3. Plan your OWN route
4. Teach yourself the difference between left &
right, then NORTH, SOUTH, EAST & WEST :-)
5. Then LEARN how to read a map correctly
Some good tips in the "Techniques" section of this pdf:
http://gphxo.org/Events/Intro_to_bike-o.pdf
Simon’s Strategy Advice:
1. Accept that we have
zero chance of visiting ALL checkpoints, so weigh up which are the "least
bang for buck" and cull them early
2. Long uphills come at a
price, so plan our route to minimise them and do them on road where possible
3. Decide on your plan A
CP grouping - "definites"
4. Decide on your plan B
CP grouping - "ambitious maybes" if you still have the time after
done with A
5. Start with plan A and then re-assess along the way if B going to
happen or perhaps a scaled down version of it
6. Key knowledge is familiarity with the fastest and easiest routes
between checkpoints, which will often be at the tops of hills. Obvious, but
worth thinking about.
7. Make sure the stronger person at least even if they are apparently
slower with being unwell :)) has a good map and holder. This will allow them to
plan the route while they wait for their partner(s) to catch up at the top of
hills after clipping the checkpoint card.
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| All done & ready to go home! |
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