Back to Basics

Well the weekend has passed with another race or 2 under our belts.  With Alex away with work and Karen on family duties it was left to Mick and Paul to fly the Haglöfs flag. The great thing about doing lots of races is that you learn from every race you do......or that is the theory.  Last weekend we decided that we would ignore all the basics and every rule in the book and do our thing!   The event was Open 5+ and the location around the North of Coniston in the Lake District.  We knew the area relatively well (or thought we did).  The race was made up of a trail run with optional orienteering, mountain biking, with optional special stages and short kayak stage on sit on tops. We had arrived at the event centre slightly late and this gave us little time to prepare and study the maps (1st lesson to be learnt - arrive early). We then listened to the briefing and more or less went straight to the start of the trail race.  We decided to the run and skip the orienteering totally (worth 120 points) so we could get a good start on the MTB and get through the special stages before any queues built up. (lesson 2 never miss a special stage, we skipped pass the orienteering section without even looking at the map, which turned out to be short and relatively easy and we threw away easy points). The mountain biking started well and we were ahead of schedule when we got to the Special Stage 1, this was a water jump into freezing cold water and a small climb to exit the old mine workings through a tunnel.  On to Special Stage 2 and a very easy scramble and again through the tunnels of the mine workings hunting down a Checkpoint (CP) in a dead end tunnel.  The Special stages had not taken us as long as we thought it might take and we now were confident of clearing the MTB stage.  We continued and made good progress but there was one CP that was causing us concern, there appeared to be only one route up and over  Tarn Howes dropping into the steep valley and back out again the same way (it was a big pointer and we felt it had to be done).  If only we had looked on the more detailed map used on the run, although all the roads leading to the CP were out of bounds there was a permissive bridleway that we had not picked up on the 1:50k map (lesson 3 - check the detailed map if you have one).  This cost us very dearly meaning we took a much longer detour up and over the energy sapping hill.  We were then racing the clock to get back in time to get to the kayak stage and in our rush went straight past a valuable 25 point CP, it was too late before we realised and we conceded it was not to be our day.  We carried on and cleared the 2.5km kayak at good speed (1 minute late back).  It was a good day out but racing we made some really basic and stupid mistakes and one we should remember to make sure we don't repeat!  Saturday night was spent winding down from the race with a few beers watching a Reggae band.


Sunday Paul and Mick joined other racers for a social paddle, plenty of time to discuss their mistakes and go through "if's and but's" whilst paddling 23 miles(up and down Windemere). Can't wait to get the next race done so we can put these demons to rest.