WOC Middle distance - spaghetti on a map

Monday, 10 July 2006

Think of Mosquito Flat.  Think of Canadian.  Then double the number of tracks.  Then reduce the scale to 1:10,000.  Only then would you have as many tracks as the middle distance race at Lykynlampi, a popular ski area near Joensuu.

 This is a type of terrain only encountered in a few parts of the world.  Apart from here, Estonia, Russia and possibly a few areas in Latvia.  It was always going to be very hard to beat these nations, particularly the Finns in this home terrain.
Alex Randall and Adrian Jackson started in the ‘red’ group.  The first 10 ranked riders in the world, who started last.  Apart from our own races most of our energy and thoughts were with them, as potential medal winners.  Both rode excellent races, but not without mistakes, to place 7^th and 17^th in 53 and 55 minutes.  A local Finn won in a shade under 50 minutes, with former world champions, Mika Tervala and Ruslan Gritsan 2^nd and 3^rd.

 
Picking up the map, one could be forgiven for thinking there had been a printing mistake.  It looked like all the tracks had been printed twice!  Most of us took a good portion of our 1 minute to find the first check point on the map.
Carolyn Jackson rode her characteristic very steady race.  At the moment we’ve not seen the final results, just having got back to our hotel.  Paul Darvodelsky had a very clean race, posting 61 minutes for 45^th place.  Steve Cusworth rode fast, but made mistakes and came in in 64 and Dave Simpfendorfer rode 74 minutes.  To give an idea of the complexity of the area, the longest time of the day was 162 minutes!

In an area which really required local knowledge of this sort of terrain, the Aussies have done really well.

I'm going for an ice cream now!