Mazovia Cup - from the forest

Monday, 26 June 2006

Mazovia is the region in which Warsaw lies.  The region is pretty flat, as much of Poland is actually, and in terms of a layman’s geology it’s all sand.  So it’s kind of sand dune terrain with beautiful open forest on it, mostly pine, but also some oak and birch.  For MTBO this means that some of the more open, large tracks are very sandy.  Like beach sand.  In these parts there is no option but to walk, but these really difficult areas are few and most of the tracks are a bit soft but good riding.  An interesting aside, often the small tracks and paths are faster than the big tracks as they get less traffic and have a harder surface.

Warsaw has the luxury of being surrounded by some large forests and these are all wonderful terrain for orienteering, particularly of the MTB type.  The track density makes Mosquito Flat and The Whipstick look easy and has had us scratching our heads many times during training last week.  It’s very difficult to actually ride fast here because when we try, we generally get lost.  So speed is down and navigation dictates how fast you can go.  Just like in foot O when one is in gold mining or complex granite.

Once again the terrain was very flat and had lots of tracks.  Saturday afternoon, starting at the very civilised time of 2 pm, we had a middle distance race and Sunday morning a long distance race with a mass start, both races ended up being much longer than the recommended winning times.

For me Saturday’s race was very good, except for a major problem with a flat tyre and then broken pump.  I used a CO2 cartridge, but only got about 12 psi in the tyre.  So I finished the last half of the course like that.  I was pretty pleased because I matched closely with the top Estonian rider who won.  Sunday was again very hot, 30ºC, and lots more sand and very small (invisible really) tracks through the forest.  As O goes, it wasn’t really happening for me Sunday and I made too many small mistakes and finished on the back of a bunch of Poles and Darryl Taylor from NZ, all of us a long way behind the two Estonian riders, who really ate up the course.