Event Details
Club: | Airienteers |
Event Name: | Baildon Moor |
Date: | 11/05/14 |
Format: | MTBO |
Mapping: | Orienteering |
Time Limit: | |
National League: | - |
League: | - |
Electronic Punch: | SportIdent |
Event Report
Thanks to all the riders and helpers for turning out on such a windy day to make the event a success. With it's maze of small paths, majority singletrack riding and considerable height gain, Baildon is an area to test all round ability - ie fitness, navigation and riding skills were all equally important.
The area has such a dense network of paths that any number of challenging courses can be dreamed up, so my focus for planning was to get you on to some of the nicer trails on the area, via a mixture of route choice legs and 'execution legs' - the latter being no soft touch either, due to the difficulty of map reading on all the single track.
Looking at folks route choices and splits gave some interesting insights - as on several legs these were different to what I'd expected: with simplifying nav through trickier sections often being a priority, at the expense of distance and climb. Having ridden every single trail on the area during the mapping process (that took a while!) I clearly had a different take on the various route choices, so an important learning point for me as a planner.
The A course produced a dead heat - pitching youth versus experience - with the win being shared by John Houlihan M50 and Edwyn Oliver-Evans Y18. Andy Windrum came in 41 seconds behind in 3rd.
On the B course, Tim Evans just dipped under the hour to win M50 ahead of John Rawden and Tony Brand Parker, with Charlotte Somers Cocks finishing 2nd overall and first woman, ahead of Sue Booth and Andrea Foster in 2nd and 3rd. Geoff Moorhouse won M60 to complete the seniors line up.
Perhaps the biggest success of the day however was the junior course, with 8 young riders all completing the course in good times - so well done to Zak Lomas, Ben Houlihan, Jake Powell, Alex Booth, Jack Sturgeon, Mary Tallontire, Adam Powell and Evan Tallontire.
Given the high winds and that most are still at primary school, this was a brilliant result - two even went out collecting controls in for me at the end, so I'll definitely be putting on another junior course in the future! Thanks to all the parents and adult riders who also went out in the wind again in order to shadow the juniors and make their rides possible.