Had a good day out last weekend in the sunshine, bit of a write up if you are interested…

http://bikegeek.noworriesuk.co.uk/gorrick-trailtrax-hannington-hampshire/

Good ride and nice write up. I got 1950 points (8th of 17 in single men) which is pretty good for me. It’s years since I’ve done one of these and I’m only really properly back riding this year after a major lull. Great trails and lovely weather, I really enjoyed it.

(thought I might clean it at one point but just ran out of legs after about 16 checkpoints)

Nice one Ian 🙂

I went anticlockwise too, and I thought most people were going the same way – funny how perceptions differ!

Always interesting to see what decisions other people make. My route was 2 7 8 3 16 4 19 15 17 5 20 10 9 14 13 1 18 6 12 11, so not actually that similar to yours.

Any idea how much distance and elevation you covered? I did just over 49km with 750m of climbing. Managed to avoid all the mud!

It was a great day out even if the weather made the course a bit easy, good effort for getting round so fast even with a broken mech.

I went clockwise starting with the set out to the east. Didn’t realise how far I’d get, so planned a high scoring sub loop rather than planning to complete. very pleased to have got all but two CPs but your point about the clockwise loop is a good one.

Strava has my route as 26.7miles, 1870 feet climbed

Have updated the blog post to include my Garmin Connect data.

Did it in just under 46km with the same amount of climbing, but that include a bit of riding up and down at the start and finish too??

I do the Dark and White events in the peak district and they use electronic dibbers, which is great coz you can see what routes all the other riders did online afterwards.

Yes, my route was a bit long in a couple of places although I traded some distance for mud avoidance. Didn’t realise we could head south from 5, if I had I’d have done 20 first, that cost me a km or so. Was also planning to do 11 between 16 and 4 but left it to last instead, still not sure if that paid off or not, probably not much in it.

Good to compare routes as I can usually learn something! Always room for improvement 🙂

We choose to go by road from 16 to 19, I bet most went back up to goto 4 first, then 19. This might have not been as pretty without the view, but much much faster with it being on road, plus 4 was further south than on the map, which was a lucky break for us due to the direction we came at it.

I learn something new each time i do them. The first thing I do now when looking at a map is see which route gives me the best climb/descent combo as you can save loads of time that way. Steep road climbs are far quicker than shallow off road climbs for the same elevation.

Which two checkpoints did you miss Ormondroyd?

Yes I went south out of Kingsclere from 16 to 4, but that’s because I was originally intending to go to 11. Changed my mind whilst I was on the road climb! Not sure it made much difference in the end.

You’re right about the climbing, its quite a balancing act weighing up distance vs elevation and taking terrain surface into account. Sometimes ease of navigation is a factor too. Like you, I prefer steeper climbs to shallow.

I missed 2 and 7. Didn’t expect to get as many checkpoints as i did, so I ignored 2 on the way out (why get 20pts and miss 200, after all)

Might have spoken to some of you? I was the very tall bloke on the very very big green Independent Fabrications hardtail

Yes a few people got round much faster than expected and then went back for checkpoints they’d ignored earlier!

Saw you at the prizegiving and was going to say hi after it was over, but did something else first and then you’d gone.

I was with my sister wearing a blue Kielder 100 T Shirt? Was standing right in front of the bench during the prize giving… We had to get off after as we had both left our other halfs withe the kids…

Ian, have you found any changes you’d have made to your route in hindsight?

Not really, point 16 maybe. Possibly have done it between 3 and 8?? instead of 11 and 19. But don’t think it would have made a huge difference.

No matter how good I think my route is before I start I always manage to find improvements when I’m safely home in front of the PC! Have to smash the pedals pretty hard to make up for the extra miles. Luckily for me, the south’s MTBO virtuoso wasn’t there to hand me another lesson this time 🙂

I would say the same for the D&W events, but you only get the maps once you are clocked in so you dont have the luxury of time to mull the map over.

That certainly makes a difference. Still don’t get it perfect though!

Trailbreak used to run navigation events in the south, and although you got the map and checkpoint locations beforehand, you only got the checkpoint values once the clock was ticking.

There were always several checkpoints that were worth zero (dummies, in effect), so even if you were expecting a clearance you still couldn’t completely determine your route beforehand.

That also gave the organisers some flexibility with course difficulty once the CPs were laid out; if the weather was good the dummies would be nearby, and if it turned nasty overnight then some of the farthest flung might be scratched.

They used dibbers too, so you could see everyone else’s route and intermediate times. Sadly numbers gradually fell away and they stopped a couple of years ago. Well done Gorrick and Sid for sticking with the format, they keep it low-key, low-budget and family friendly.

Would love to go and do some on big hills up north. One day…

The D&W events are very good, and also very hard. Easily 2000m climbing in 3 hours. They get a great turn out each time too, easily 300+ regardless of weather..

My sister loved it and said she do one with her husband and kids now she understands the format.

I love them, I do a lot of Enduro’s too but like these because you are not following the heard. Also, I may be not as fit as some guys that do it, but can beat them due to better navigation and decision making skills. There is a guy i train with that has easily got the legs on me in a straight race, but in BMBO he gets no where near…

The other bonus for me is they open your eyes to some great trails that you wouldn’t normally find. I did an event near hayfiled a few weeks back, 2 miles from where i used to live and it covered tracks i didnt even know where there.

That’s pretty much what I like about them too. I also do plenty of endurance stuff, and also some short XC, but MTBO is a bit different. Good to use the brain, and the 3 hours just flies by (not that 3 hours were needed last weekend).