46 teams turned up to compete in the 16th running of the CATS Crackers.
This year the event headquarters was the Husbands Bosworth Sports Pavilion on the A4304 about 6 miles from Junction 20 of the M1.
The area chosen had a mixture of good by-ways, bridleways, canal towpaths and quiet country lanes and was fairly flat with only 40 meters or so of land elevation.
In the week leading up the event, the area had seen 6 inches of snow on the Wednesday, then freezing temperatures on the Thursday and heavy rain on the Friday & Saturday so the ground in many places was very heavy going.
I took the very unusual step in putting the checkpoints on view on the table master maps so the riders could quiz the locals on who they thought certain tracks would ride.
This certainly helped many riders with Nick Calkin clearing the map, visiting all 27 checkpoints but overran his time by 9 minutes to amass 487 out of the 500 possible, 2nd was Andy Smith finishing 3 minutes late but amassing 447 and 3rd was Andy Gregg on 445 with no time penalties.
All 41 pre entrants received a free small bottle of bubbly to help celebrate the new year in.
No controls were reported missing or misplaced and despite the very wet conditions everyone seemed to have a great time, with only positive feedback received. No reported any problems, which is always good for an organiser and no one had all points lost.