Sunday 12th April was bright, cold and sunny – just a couple of very light showers rushed through on the brisk southwesterly wind. Nearly 60 MBO riders turned up at the Rogate Village Hall to experience a new area for SLOW .
This part of the South Downs National Park features wooded hillsides and open farmland with a good network of minor roads and bridleways. With little rain in the previous weeks the trails were in perfect condition, mud was in short supply and the bluebells were out.
With a large number of new riders (20) to our events there was a high demand for the loan map boards. Dave Uglow had to spring into production to satisfy the demand. These boards undoubtedly help the new riders to try out our events.
The sudden rush of entries in the last two weeks also necessitated a bit of head scratching on the parking front. Alastair Crossman and his day-glo gloves did a great job of cramming far more cars than planned into the Rogate Village Hall car park.
The riders were briefed about a bike road race circuit right in the middle of the map on the same day. The road race single track hill climb was made out of bounds and some road crossing points were mandated for our riders. Several people experienced the peloton plus race cars sweep past them!
With the heavily wooded areas some riders found it hard on the map to distinguish between bridleways and footpaths. However, West Sussex is very good at maintaining its right-of-way network and the signage on the ground was clear. Consequently, some penalty adjustments had to be made to individual scores after the event.
With a possible clearance distance of 60K+ and an elevation gain of 900 ft the top riders did well to only drop a three or four Cp’s in the allotted 3 hours.
Nuno Cerqueira topped the board, beating Mike Dencher by just 3 points. Equal 3rd place went to Alan Elder and Tom Davies. Rachael Clay was the first women home in 7th place.
The pairs event was won by locals Alastair Crossman and Nigel Mills while Michael Rackham topped the EBIKE category.
The next SLOW event is on the 31st May at St Leonards in the Chilterns.