In the first week of July, Rob and Marquita competed in the Czech 5-day MTBO event, held every 2 years since 2005 and sort of the O-Ringen of MTBO. This year saw 900 competitors, the biggest MTBO event ever, apparently.
Usually held near the city of Plzen, famous for the beer, this year was instead near a village called Doksy, about 90 minutes north of Prague. The forest was fairly flat but sloping up to a very large hill on one edge with an ancient castle ruin on top. Track surfaces ranged from extremely sandy to firm packed in the more deciduous forest. The mapping reflected this with a few exceptions – by the end of the week we got to know which tracks to avoid!
I competed in W40 while Rob took on M60, both in fields of around 50 riders.
Day 1 was a middle distance, day 2 a sprint and day 4 a long. Day 3 was a mass start – this is a bit like a one-man relay with several loops so you never knew if the people around you were going to the same control as you, and it was hard to tell how you were doing until right at the end.
The last day was a free order event which was also a chasing start, adding to the pressure! There were a number of controls that you had to do in numerical order i.e you had to punch 1 before 2 before 3 etc (numbered and joined with lines on the map) and an additional number of controls that could be collected at any time, but you had to get all of them, so not like a rogaine where you can miss some out. The best way for the W40 course are was S-62-58-1-61-54-2-3-52-83-56-69-79-4-40-34-5-F although I didn’t quite get this right and managed to lose a place going from 4th to 5th overall.
Rob ended up about 12th in a very competitive M60 field having made a few silly mistakes along the way.
All in all a very fun week. An interesting point in the programme showed the Czech love for beers, especially if you wanted to contest the event or placing:
“Protests: to any of the officials with a deposit of 5 beers, during the evening program”. The “evening program” was a party of one sort or the other with very loud music until 1-3am!
Cheers Marquita
Marquita’s results:
Day one E1 Middle – 8th place in W40 +2.37 off the lead
Day two E2 Sprint – 3rd place +0.19 sec
Day three E3 Mass start – 4th place +1.11
Day four E4 Long – 6th place +5.05
Day five E5 Semi-free order – 5th place +12.39
Overall event placing: 5th
Rob’s results:
Day one E1 Middle -10th place in W60 +5.13 off the lead
Day two E2 Sprint – 27th place +5.18
Day three E3 Mass start – 29th place +16.07
Day four E4 Long 6th place – 6th place +4.41
Day five E5 Semi-free order – 12th place +32.35
Overall event placing: 12th
Checkout the atmosphere in these videos from the event:
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