Austwick MBO 25th
April 2026
A thank you to the 18 that made effort to enter and turn out for lovely fast
riding on a glorious day.
When planning there are 2 considerations.
Firstly the course has to be long enough so that the best riders can not visit
all the controls. This worked apart from Tom Gibbs well done to him.
Secondly to give you a large number of dilemmas when selecting which
order to visit the controls, which were to be in and out, which to ride through.
From the start at least 6 options were chosen. All seems to enjoy the
intensity of many controls close together, balanced by some longer legs. I
tried to contrast longer legs on road in NW with the off-road tracks in the
East and South. As a planner it seems all is good if folks ride different routes
and sequences, which you did.

To take a look at the different routes taken https://results.maprun.net/
Select the event - KIrbyStephen2026
Refresh results
Show tracks
Enter event code 8233
Select all or the rider(s) you are interested in
Hit the replay tab
Use the tabs to adjust tail length , speed and add names
Enjoy and learn!

Apologies for two mapping errors,;
The Beep for control 45 was set too far along the old railway track. I had not
intended that you need to cross the awkward fence stile. And control 15 was
marked at wrong wall junction on the event map.
This did not seem to deter from your enjoyment of the event and we thank
you for your good humour and gratitude shown.
MapRun! When you pass through the finish your results should take a few
seconds to download to the event results. For 4 of you this did not occur,
however when you refreshed the event results they appeared. Maybe
remember, in case this occurs again. 3 riders score showed as 0. When I
checked the downloaded results at home the controls were there, in order
and time splits. But the controls had not been ticked by the software, so I did
this manually. All was good. No idea why this occurred.
Those that claimed their beeps did not register- I checked your tracks and
credited you with those controls that you passed. It seems you were more
than 30m away but within 40m.

The artificially high scores for all were due to you being warned an extra 10
points for each control you visited. I have now corrected this error so the
scores on the results table should be correct. Late penalties also applied
1 to 5 minutes late: 1 point lost per minute
5 to 10 minutes late: 2 points lost per minute
10 to 15 minutes late: 5 points lost per minute
15 to 30 minutes late: 10 points lost per minute
Over 30 minutes late: Disqualification (loss of all points)

If you find any more errors in your scores please let me know by next
Tuesday at the latest.

It seems some horses deterred a few from visiting control 11!!!!

This event was the second XCC event for about 18 years and our
second using MApRun with different control values, it is a bit of a
learning curve. So thanks you for being our guinea pigs, you help and
feedback and being of good humour on the day with the few glitches.
Congratulation to Tom Gibbs for clearing the course in 2.48.57 and we
are all inspired by Karen Blackburn, hoping we are still doing it at the
same age.

A big thanks to those who travelled so far to take part.
One last thought, If your MapRun App did not perform as it should
have either might be an idea to uninstall it form your mobile, then
reinstall the most recent version. Hopefully the glitches will go away.

A plea again. For this event we had to book and pay a fee to use the
Rugby club and parking. However 10 days before the event it was
nearly cancelled as only 5 had entered. As an organiser we feel secure
that we can cover the event costs. So if you can find a way to enter
more than a week, ideally 2 weeks before an event it would help a lot.
It might even make the difference to encourage some to plan more
events.

We had 18 entries today. Not a lot but enough, More entires would
make the effort of planning etc more fulfilling, so neater early and try
and encourage a friend to join you next time.
Found in the car park a contact lens case, blue and white, If it yours
and you need it back let me know.
Hope to see you at the next one. Maybe in July.