Event Details
Club: | SWEMBO |
Event Name: | SW League - Puddletown Forest |
Date: | 21/06/14 |
Format: | MBO Score |
Mapping: | Ordnance Survey |
Time Limit: | 3 hours or 2 hours |
National League: | - |
League: | Southwest MBO Score League 2014 (Round 3 of 6) |
Electronic Punch: | No |
Event Report
After the normal frantic week prior to the event, CP placing Friday came. It was already hot when I left home shortly after 8am, so I knew I was in for a scorcher !!!
My plan was to put them out in 3 separate loops, Black Hill, Moreton woods, and lastly Puddletown Forest. So after parking up in the far NE of the map, my first loop took me up around Black Hill. The first two CP's went out with no problems, but then as I came down the track toward CP7 I noticed this tinkling sound and looking down realised that the nut on my QR pin of my front wheel had fallen off, and the wheel was only held on by gravity!!! After much deliberation I zip tied the QR lever to the fork and continued on warily watching out for any drop offs.
Loop 2 was uneventful, but then on the final loop, I was merrily going about my business when there was a clunk, and my chainring bolts fell off, resulting in my middle chainring getting mangled and irremovable with the tools I had on me. This was the final straw!! The bike got thrown in the back of the car and I ran the remainder of the CP's.
Nine hours after I started, I finally finished and it was time to get home and finish the final details before bed.
Event day started early, and with Rich having work commitments, young Elliot was recruited to help out for the day. We had just finished setting up when the first of the competitors started to arrive, most trying to make the most of the slightly cooler early morning before it got too hot!!!
With all the competitors set off, our attention was turned to setting up the refreshments for when everyone returned. As Faye was running the Race For Life the following day for Cancer Research UK, we decided to have a donations box for the refreshments. We raised an additional £41 from this, so thank you to those of you who donated.
With only a few early retirements, most people seemed to really enjoy the course with some big scores where the dry conditions made this already fast area even faster!!!
Once everyone was accounted for, it was time was time for the presentations.
The Overall Winner was Paul Gebbett, only just pinched 1st place from Janet Burroughes & Matt Jepson courtesy of rule 2 in the Tie Break rules: The competitor(s) that have visited the most checkpoints (returning within the time limit). Ron Barrett took 3rd Overall.
Class wins went to: Fiona Boyd (W21), Tristan Morrissey (M21), Paul Gibbett (M40), Ron Barrett (M50), John Butler (M60), Janet & Matt (Mixed Pairs), Stuart Ball & Timothy Redmond (Male Pairs, and Hannah Jones & Jackie Shute (Female Pairs)
This just left us to clean the hall and collect in the CP's. With John Butler kindly offering to collect in the Puddletown Forest CP's (as he hadn't been to that section of the map) and Martin Goddard offering to collect in CP 24 while he looked for his compass that he had dropped, we had all the CP's back in in record time. The only negative being we had CP2 pinched.
By 8pm we were back home enjoying a few glasses of Pimms.
Thanks to you all for coming and making the event worthwhile, I hope you all enjoyed it, and we look forward to seeing you all at our next two-day-event on North Exmoor on 16th & 17th Aug.
Will, Faye & Elliot.