I was optimistic about this race as I'd been doing some foot orienteering to practice navigation. It was raining and the ground was as muddy as anything so I tried to swap my tyres before starting, but couldn’t get the new Nobby Nics on – it turned out they were UST ones so gave that idea up and just had to slip and slide around on my Crossmarks instead! I stylishly wore a cap under my helmet to try and keep the rain off my glasses. It worked too so I’ll be doing that again! Shame it looks so rubbish although I did pick out a red cap to fit with my outfit...
I started just before some of the GB’s, which was a psychological disaster, I much prefer to be the chaser rather than the chasee! I was doing OK up until number 6, when I took a wrong path and wasted 5 mins whilst I worked that out and then relocated. If I had looked at the compass more I would have noticed sooner because I went north east instead of north west. I met Lucy coming into number 6 and we both slid down a very muddy almost vertical descent. Lucy brought her bike too and nearly took me out! She’d started 5 mins behind me so my mistake to this control was costly!
The rest was OK, apart from turning too early to number 8 and losing another minute. It was really muddy and I found myself running bits that were very slippery because it was faster than wheel spinning along trying to ride!
I was quite proud of 13 -1 4 because I did the thing I learnt from Alan H (who won the A race) and foot-o where you can race towards a catching feature and which particular path you are on is irrelevant, just go in the right general direction. It worked and I see my track in the map below is green for that part, which means fast :o)
