This is partly a sneaky way to tell you that OMM will be running two mountain bike events. One in the North East of England in April and one in the North West in September. The April event Long Score Class will compete for the Polaris Challenge Trophy. It will also be a good opportunity to introduce a young person as the event is open to 14 year olds. Go to the OMM website for more details.

On the September event we would like to run workshops. My question is what workshops should we do and are there any volunteers to help us out?

Will watch this with interest….

Already signed up and looking forward to the “April” event on 3-4 May 😀

Used to love Polaris.Can’t wait.

“April” event is in April – 26th/27th to be precise

If you love the polaris BMBO wwebsite well worth a visit

http://www.bmbo.org.uk/index.php

April 27 is also the date for a BMBO event in the Black Mountains, part of Hay Bike Fest.

Full deets here http://www.bmbo.org.uk/calendar/details.php?event_id=513

Why is there an age limit of 14 on the short event?

I’d be up for a MTB event in Iceland.

That Hay event is part of the Black Mountains Series.
I’m organising one of the events in that series on Clee Hill on 24th August.
http://www.bmbo.org.uk/calendar/details.php?event_id=528

My question is what workshops should we do…

My experience of talking to people who have never tried mountain bike orienteering is that they have an image of foot orienteers heading off on a bearing across the moors, or in to a block of forestry, searching for a tiny punch hidden in the undergrowth and think it will be something similar on bikes.
I think it’s worth emphasising that all Control Points will be at an obvious junction or bridge with the punch attached to an obvious landmark, like a signpost or bridge handrail.
The last event I rode, I visited 28 CPs and was stationary for 8 minutes, that’s about 20 seconds at each CP.

Useful tricks to teach;

Pylons are the best landmarks. They can be seen from miles away.

If you’re heading for a bridge over a stream and you’re still going down hill, you haven’t got there yet. If you start going up hill, you’ve missed it.

Assuming you are using a milometer or GPS without a map display;
The squares on the map are 1km. So, for example, if you are on a lane looking for a bridleway on the right and it’s about one and a half squares away, look at your current mileage. If it’s on say, 26.3km, then you can expect the bridleway to appear at around 27.8km, so you can put your head down and concentrate on pedalling up to about 27.5km.

I don’t know exactly how you would put this in to a workshop though.

“April” event is in April – 26th/27th to be precise

You got me there. I just received an email from the OMM to explain what was going on. It really was 3/4 May when I signed up …

As you may have noticed we have had to move the event to the weekend of the 26/27th April at the request of the Forestry Commission. This is down to the fact that the Pirelli Rally is coming through the area on the weekend of the 3rd/4th May.

It means there’s no challenge course (i.e. original Polaris with wilderness camp), but I’m still planning on being there.

There’s a long score wild camp (7+5) which sounds like proper Polaris to me

Nice of the OP to get back to us……