I
entered this with my friend Jeff from Sheffield. Basically you have
fixed times (7 hours on Saturday and 5 hours Sunday) to visit as
many control sites as you can manage on mountain bikes carrying
camping equipment for the weekend. The Saturday night campsite and
the control sites are only revealed after the clock has started.
Different controls are worth different scores and the aim is to
get the highest score. If you exceed the time limit you start to
lose points.
There are three events a year with the summer
one based at a static camp so you don't need to carry camping gear.
This year's spring event was in the Brecon Beacons starting in Brecon.
You can compete as a solo or a pair.
There was a wide range of people and bikes
taking part. Nearly everyone had front suspension including us although
many were full suspension and with disc brakes. Rucksacs were the
preferred method for carrying everything but there were some panniers
and one tandem with a trailer!
As the limit is time rather than distance,
you can plot a route to suit your abilities. We found it very hard
to estimate how far we would cover, although we guessed at an average
of 10 km/hr. We achieved 12 km/hr including planning a route and
walking ascents/descents that were too tricky to cycle. We were
able to change our plans through the day to fit the time remaining.
We arrived at the finish on both days with less than 5 minutes to
spare. On the Saturday it was only 1.5 minutes which was cutting
it a bit
fine!
For me it was only the second time out on real
hills, so I learnt lots - cycling on rock slabs, broken up bridleways,
steep rocky descents. Although the bulk of the distance and speed
was on small farm roads you were forced off onto bridleways of varying
quality to get to the control points themselves. Keeping to bridleways
is strictly enforced - using paths leads to instant disqualification.
Navigation on 1:50 000 maps and route choices played a big role
and planning the last hour as to what you could achieve was complete
brain overload!
The weather was fantastic with some stunning
views over the passes on the Saturday and a very dramatic long sweeping
track down through an old quarry on the Sunday. I was a little chilly
overnight having opted to take only a summer sleeping bag but it
was ok. After day 1 we were in 21st place out of about 240 in the
Male open class, which we were pleased with, although some of the
people above us had fantastic scores. We covered 85 km. I dread
to think how far the top people covered.
For this event, I rigged up a towing bungy
on the back of my bike as Jeff tends to be a bit slower up the hills.
This worked really well. It took some practice to get hooked up
whilst cycling along and although it looks a bit scary to be so
close behind, we didn't crash, I didn't die from the extra effort
and as a team we both got up the hills quicker than we would have
if I'd stomped to the top and sat waiting for Jeff (not to mention
pissing him off big time!) |
