Open 5 race report

Mountain 5 Open5 Series - Sutton Bank (somewhere in Yorkshire), 11th March 2007

Finishing position: 21st of 53 (male solo category)
Finishing-position-if-everything-had-gone-to-plan: ooh, I'd say about 9th

Things that went right:

• My bike didn't fall to bits half way round. Given the condition of my bike, that is worth celebrating in itself!
• It was a nice bright, dry day, hence at no point did my brake pads become clogged up with mud and dirt (as is the norm)
• My route choice was relatively sensible. Lots of high scoring check points dotted together deftly avoiding all the densely packed contour lines on the map.
• Looking at the route analysis site, several of the other competitors seemed to head straight up the densely packed contour lines and so lost a lot of points in penalties, to my benefit.
• I decided to bike first. Frankly this was so that I wouldn't lose all my points in penalties if the bike did fall to bits (which, as ever, I was half expecting). However an advantage of this approach was my transition consisted of dumping my bike and beginning my run. No time wasted re-adjusting the brake pads (for the 14th time...), tucking into a three course picnic lunch (as others do) or similar annoying distractions.
• I suffered from a bad cold earlier in the week, and so was probably snoring in the local YHA. This would have ensured that several of the other competitors would not have had a restful night
  

Things that didn't go right:

• Typically, I left my fancy technical £65 running shoes at work. These are the same fancy technical running shoes that I have previously abandoned on a bus to Leith (but were recovered thanks to Lothian buses). I had to run in my 'dossing around the house' £19.99 trainers instead. I blame this for my slow running speed.
  
• The forest trails on the map were a very poor match for the forest trails in reality. Either that or I was just plain lost. Looking at the route analysis I lost about 40 minutes or so on the leading competitors whilst biking around the forest trails section of the course trying to find the checkpoints there. I could have made good use of those 40 minutes in the running section collecting the extra 50 points that had originally been on my route - then I would have been 9th!
• Looking at the most successful route decisions - my running route could have been more creative. In particular, the guy who came first was clearly 'thinking outside the box' by spurning the circular run that most of us chose.

Interesting landmarks:

• do not walk on the Kilburn White Horse
• dramatic sutton bank cliff - possibly the location for an ancient hill fort
• the B6270 , winding its way gradually cross country along the path of the river Swale. Sheep and rabbits from the surrounding hilly countryside carelessly amble across the road although the abundant roadkill corpses indicate that this carefree trust in the motorist is misplaced. My quote: 'Maybe this is like the road to hell... or Yorkshire". No really, it's a very picturesque road, and my anti-yorkshire prejudice is bred purely from a mixture of automatic suspicion and ignorance.
  

Generally I was fairly happy about how it went, although if I was actually organised enough to train for these events now and again I might be up there with the, like, real contenders in the top ten. But I'm lazy... still maybe for the Keswick event in May I will make a special effort.