I messed this race right up, which was unfortunate as it was a World Championships selection race – trust my luck! It wasn't even one thing, it was lots of things...
I’d been warming up for about an hour whilst the GB people got going, I didn’t want the added pressure of them breathing down my neck. When I finally got started, within 5 mins my mudguard worked loose and got all caught up in my wheel. I swore a bit and yanked the whole thing off, threw it to the side and tried to locate it afterwards but, unfortunately, it was the last I ever saw of it. It had a whole hour to do that before the race! Why now?!
I’d been warming up for about an hour whilst the GB people got going, I didn’t want the added pressure of them breathing down my neck. When I finally got started, within 5 mins my mudguard worked loose and got all caught up in my wheel. I swore a bit and yanked the whole thing off, threw it to the side and tried to locate it afterwards but, unfortunately, it was the last I ever saw of it. It had a whole hour to do that before the race! Why now?!
I was struggling to read the map and cycle because the ground was consistently rough and so I couldn’t make out the tracks on the map as they were jangling around too much. So I found I had to stop every now and again to make sure I was seeing right – I have never had to do this before but really had no option given I couldn’t see properly! Anyway, I was doing OK for a couple more controls after the mudguard incident, and then my front wheel plunged into a bog whilst I was engrossed in the map and I went flying over the bars – still attached to my bike! I wasn’t happy. The levers all got out of line but I couldn’t move them so after kicking them a lot to try and get them back, I recovered myself and continued on my way. A little bruised and quite dirty by this stage.
All was well again, I saw lots of people wandering around aimlessly, some asking if I’d managed to find the control yet. Then something strange happened, on a seemingly easy leg, 15 – 16, I passed a lot of walkers and I must have got momentarily distracted (I remember thinking what’s with all these walkers on this section) because I reached a junction and the path I wanted was not there. I searched around, then decided I must be in the wrong place, got all confused with the hundreds of paths everywhere around me and no identifying features, and realised all was not well! I was going to retrace my steps but when I turned around I had no idea which of the paths I’d actually come from. So I cycled around a lot trying to match things up and finally pinpointed my location because there were two parallel paths, one with open ground around it (yellow on the map) and one without. I still missed the entrance to number 16 but saw where I now was and looped around to get it.
The rest of the race passed without incident but I was traumatised by my getting lost and all of a sudden had the biggest headache ever! I was losing the will and finally made it back in 1.5 hours, it should have taken me an hour best case and 1 hour 15 worst case. Oops.
Talking to the GB bods afterwards, the correct thing to do in such situations is leave the area entirely. Pick a direction and cycle in it, e.g. go North. Then, apparently, you recognise something on the map ‘within a minute’, rather than the 17 mins it took me to get between 15 and 16! Top tip duly noted.
