Thetford pines winter enduro, 16th Feb '03
3 of us (Ash, Chris and myself) set off this morning at 9am to head over to
Thetford forest for the winter enduro. Now becoming a landmark event in the
Thetford race calendar, it links up some of the finest Breckland singletrack
with fire road to create a a sooping, twisting course 8.5 miles long.
Competitors can choose to do 2, 3 or 4 laps of the course, so in true CUCC
style (or the inability to count...) we chose 4 laps. The grey skies cleared
as soon as we reached the start field at Mayday farm fireroad to make a
clear, cold day. The turnout was exceptional with somewhere in excess of 300
competitors.
After registering and chatting to Jo Burt (of Mint Sauce fame for all you
heathens out there...) who happened to be standing next to me and was riding
his mountain tandem, we started to warm up (not an easy task in the light
but very keen NE breeze). The start went off at 11am and off we went. There
were about 200 racers in the 4 lap category, which made for quite some
gridlock for at the first piece of singletrack for those who were not
fortunate enough to get a clean start. For those of you who know Thetford to
a passable extent, the course started at Mayday and went as follows :
west towards the long thin bombhole
down swoopy junior
double back at the end of sj, and then on fireroad to the next block to
the east
back through new plantations (bermed!!) eventually ending up on the
fireroad going north form Mayday towards the jumping bombhole
down the start of the old 'downhill' course opposite the jumping
bombhole
left along doubletrack to new plantation areas
back to join where the old 'downhill' course ended
through the very muddy plantation near Mayday going towards the very
swoopy, bermy bit of singletrack at the end of fireroad 10
along very swoopy, bermy bit of singletrack at the end of fireroad 10
out, along fireroad and then eventually into new plantation with a
*very* corrugated surface
along the singletrack going west along the side of fireroad 10 back
towards Mayday race field
through bombhole on the singletrack (small one)
repeat....
We all had a pretty good race with Ash putting in a good overtake in lap 3,
not to be seen again until the finish! Some of our riding companians from
Bristol that we were in Coed-y-Brenin with last week were also there, with
Ian Corfe (ex OUCC and now Bristol Uni CC) taking 3rd singlespeed place, 2
minutes in front of Chris.
Full results are (overall positions of out 197, class positions out of 130 for Ash and Bart, 27 for Chris):
| Name | Class | Lap1 | Lap 2 | Lap 3 | Lap 4 | Total time | O'll posn | Class posn |
| aSH | Senior+ | 39:33.5 | 39:26.6 | 40:31.1 | 41:26.7 | 2:40:57.9 | 22 | 17 |
| Bart | Senior+ | 39:06.3 | 39:40.1 | 41:39.3 | 46:30.7 | 2:46:56.4 | 31 | |
| Chris | Singlespeed/Masochist | 42:21.7 | 42:40.7 | 42:35.6 | 41:42.0 | 2:49:20.0 | 34 | 4 |
A great time was had by all.
Thanks to:
Chris - and his landy
Mum - for chain-feeding me hotcross buns after finishing and standing
in the cold as team support
Ian Corfe- for the jelly babies 15 mins from the finish when fading fast...
No thanks to:
Late nights and departmental dinners!
Bart Hallmark
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