I was surprised at how unstressful the world cup was. It was just like every other race really. I got an earlyish start so I didn't even have to go in quarantine. There was a practice course by the start so I did a bit of that whilst I was waiting. I did get nervous when I walked up at my start time, then there are the 3 mins in the tapes to wait before you can go. I struggled to get my map on the board because it was an A4 stapled to an A3. I had to fold the A 3 to get the right part I needed and the other map was flapping around. Anyway, it took me the whole minute to get it on so when the beeper went I hadn't looked at my route to number 1 yet! Luckily the start flag was around the corner so by the time I'd got there I'd quickly worked it out.
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| John in the start tapes |
I usually mess up number 1 when I'm nervous, but today was OK. It was number 2 instead! I was calming myself down but must have still been a bit frantic because I missed the turning, realised when I could see an open field, and tried to turn around, but my chain fell off at the back and the front! I got that back on then missed a turn on the tracks so had to go back to the road to sort out what I'd done wrong. That was my mistake. After that I was relaxed and the rest of it went without any errors to speak of.
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| Map 1 |
The course seemed relatively easy in that there were no really tricky bits and the bulk of the distance could be done on fire roads before nipping in to the dotty tracks to get the controls. Yesterday in the model event we found that you can't navigate by saying next left or 3rd right, because the smaller tracks can be completely not there. Sometimes if you looked hard enough you could kind of tell that the grass was a bit flatter than the rest so that was a track, but if you didn't know exactly where to look you'd never see it. So we had to use everything else to know where the tracks were; shape of the land, tree thickness, fences etc. luckily there was always something to give it away today.
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| Map 2 |
I found it pretty hard going and my chain was making a noise. It fell off twice more! I didn't seem to be able to back pedal at all. I thought my legs must be still tired from last weekends adventure race so I had 2 gels and pedalled as hard as I could. When I got back the boys looked at my bike and someone noticed my chain wasn't on the bottom jockey wheel! When we looked it wasn't on either jockey wheel, it was running on the plastic at the side. The jockey wheels were pushed right over against the edge. The carbon wheel part had come away from the ceramic housing. So much for ultimate bearings! I couldn't believe that I'd done my first proper world cup race without jockey wheels and I also couldn't believe I didn't notice what was wrong!
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| Oops! |
