It was the third SMBO event of the autumn and finally I was at the start line without a knee or leg problem! After a fast bike experience at the Open 5 in the Lake District, plus generally feeling good about my skills right now, I was looking forward to a fast and hard race.

The omens were in my favour at the start, as someone had taken the time to etch my initials into the pavement! It was very nippy outside though. We were all shivering when we got out of our cars and there was low lying fog that the sun was barely breaking through.

Permanent initials! (Thanks to Heili for the photo)

We could only view a map of the general area at the start, so no advance route planning was possible. The map seemed small and there were two wooded areas that looked complicated to navigate in. One of them even came with warnings about the number of paths and detail (or lack of) in the mapping.

After taking off several layers of clothes I was ready to start. I got the map and decided to hastily highlight a possible route. A few hundred metres up the road I mentally reorganised it a bit, deciding to take a long fast route round the edge of the map. This meant straightforward looking navigation, picking up a few controls just on and off the minor roads, then heading up a big hill for the highest scoring control of the day. This suited my mood better than complex navigation and slow / very technical riding. I left the tricky forests for ‘if I had time’ at the end.

Everything went quite well for a while. I did not get zapped by any killer gorse. I got a little bit lucky at the first difficult bit of navigation, trusting my bike computer distances to find the right turn and luckily spotting another rider taking my next (slightly obscure) junction! I soon got muddy feet 🙂 . Crossing a rough bumpy field I was pleased that I actually rode it all and did not fall off.

Next up was the big climb up a hill. It was a long way but it was high scoring. Another bonus was that it took me out of the cold, damp cloud and into glorious bright sunshine. Looking across the valley I could see the Wallace Monument floating in a sea of fog and had to stop and take a picture. On the way down I met three friends going the other way – Marc, Paul and Glen. Marc told me tales of a twitchy horse in a field. He must have missed my pre-race tales of horse problems in the exact same place on a ride several years ago! Luckily I wasn’t going that way, else I’d have been worried.

Beautiful views across the valley

Just after this I narrowly escaped a herd of cows funnelling at speed into the same small space as me. Then I made a mistake, matching a ‘small path’ on the map to a small path on the ground and finding myself not on a path any more, in the woods and perched high above a river I needed to cross further down. Rather than risking my life on a cliff, I backtracked and found the right (large path) just a couple of hundred metres further along. Two out and backs done, fixing the improvised caribiner gate closure in both directions (why were people leaving it untied?). Then a bit of luck navigating back out to the road, as the map and ground didn’t seem to match too closely. A bit of ‘trusting my instinct’ for that one and heading down the big track to some houses.

I now only had a short while left to ride. I devised a route skirting the difficult forest and nipping in for a ‘quick’ loop in the easier one. Even before I started this I hesitated – did I have time? The first control was on a narrow, muddy, rooty path. Then it started climbing and even after the control continued up. Maybe I should have just backtracked – but there were two more controls this way! I was now over time but thought it was still worth it by this stage if I got back under 15 minutes late.

Unfortunately, I then made a silly error. I checked the map and thought ‘turn right on the main track and you’ll be right by the road bridge’. I turned right, then got to another, bigger junction. I thought, ‘oh, this must have been it’ and turned right again. Something felt wrong … and 500m later I realised I should have gone left at the second junction. Garrrgh! This cost me 3 minutes.

As I dibbed at the end, my watch read 15:57 late. In fact, when I downloaded the dibbers must have been out of sync, as it said 16:03 late (and yes, I started and stopped my watch before and after start / finish dibbing respectively). As penalties get higher and higher per minute the longer you’re late back, those 3 minutes cost me an extra 25 to 30 penalties!! I was docked 60 points in total.

Clean new shoes

Dirty new shoes!

But at least my new shoes had been christened, performed admirably and did not fall apart! 😀 I was also lucky to get away with it this time and won the ladies category (although it was a small field). I then didn’t mind so much, as the extra hard workout had been fun – though it was still frustrating to have such a costly silly error so near to the end! Hearing tales of confusion in the woods I think my strategy had been good in principle.

That’s all for SMBO events until the spring. Between now and then it will be Open 5s and Bowhill duathlons, so I really need to re-find my running legs.