Am I the first to post after this weekends Polaris? Well done again to the organisers and I was really impressed with the electronic tagging system. Off now to investigate the state of my wheel bearings.

David Marlow

And I am going to investigate the Landrover axle, which, due to the hammering the aged beast received in the days leading up to the event, appears to be parting company with the chassis.

Niel and Killian should be able to whittle you a replacement bit out of any convienient branch, then just attach with a couple of zip ties.

Whats the answer on these Ploaris tents then, any comments?

I would just like to thank Graham,Jerry and all the other marshalls, organisers, and helpers for a really excellent weekend. We were particulary impressed with the electronic tag system and the sun coming out on sunday.

Exactly. Great event planning. Really enjoyed it.
The Polaris tent seems to be better than the Sup' Air. It pitches really easily - takes about 1 minute! Sup' Air takes over 10 minutes! I used the tent at the event. Very good, but it's yet to be seen how it performs for 2 people and in bad weather.

Definately approve of the electronic tagging. Will we interesting to see how it compares with the SI(Sport Ident) system.

http://www.singletrackworld.com

Seem to have the results out already. No more waiting on the internet for the results to appear a week later.

Yeah, great event. Nice to be back in some
real hills. electronic scoring worked really well
and adds a lot to the event. Will we be able to
see everyone's split times between pairs of
checkpoints (well actually I probably won't look
at all of them - just a select few, but it will be
very interesting) - excuse me if this is on the
Singletrack site already, but I've gone Apple
Mac and can't open Excel files at the moment.

Sorry I didn't attend the prize giving but I was
busy lying down.

Being a virgin PCer I didn't know what to expect. Really enjoyed the event and am looking forward to the summer PC. I used the new Polaris tent along with my team mate. Room not a problem and our bags fitted in the porch quite easily. A bit chilly with the side vents. At 675 grams who cares? See you in the Peaks.

Definitely a well planned event - it certainly caught me out!

The punches worked well, definitely not a problem provided you knew how to use them (I waited 20 seconds behind somebody who obviously didn't!). Maybe a little slower than SI (we're splitting hairs here, with a checkpoint every 20 or 30 minutes), but far quicker than paper punches. Only one suggestion - can we have 2 leds - one on each side, so you don't have to spin the control round.

Polaris tent - a bit chilly with all the venting, but as Gary says, a lot simpler to pitch than a Sup-Air. I'd probably like just a tad more fabric in the groundsheet at the front, so you could seal that bit up better, with more velcro to attach / detach this bit from the outer. Would that add on too many crucial grams though?!

Interesting to see the comments about the event. It was as usual an extremely well organised event and the electronic tagging system worked well.

Main criticism was the locations of some of the checkpoints - in particular the northern ones which were either torrents of mud or uncyclabe rock outcrop ascents (or both!) Lots of people we spoke to thought the same. Did anyone ride these before the event to test the ground? A Good friend of mine injured his arm quite badly in this area and was testimony to its difficultness.

Sun came out on Sunday though which was nice!

Thanks for a great event. To whom do I send the bill for brake blocks and bearings!!?

Electronic punching definitely the way forward but I found these detectors less reliable and less easy to use than the Sport Ident detectors. In 4 events using SI, I found not a single problem. This weekend I could not get two detectors to work at all and several took a little too much fiddling than they should.

I echo the message from Phil M, those Northern checkpoints were tough, but hey, it's the Polaris, so I'd be interested to hear from anyone in the top 50 on whether you rode or pushed to the northern CP's?

Electronic punching great improvement, please don't go back to paper/punches.

Any chance of a (chargeable) jet wash at future events?

Graham et al, thanks for booking decent weather. I can't begin to imagine the carnage if it had rained.......

Well, that was my first outing on a PC, i think i was cursing at the time but now it seems like a good idea.

The sun on sunday made it infinately better.

The northern CP's were a nightmare, but by far the worst was CP5 on day 2, its was more of a hippo's playground than a ridable track!

I rode all but a very small part of the northern checkpoints - though I did this at the start of Saturday, and it may well have got worse. Also did these anti-clockwise, which was almost certainly a better direction. The track from 29 to 28 on the NW checkpoints had plenty of pushing for me, as did from there to 25/27, but then these were all on climbs, and the down bits were rideable. The only downhill I can remember not riding in the whole N / NW section was the rocky track down past 30 - would probably have been doable if I'd had a working back brake!

I also did 5 on day 2, and happily rode in on the track from the south, though it was a push out going east (again a climb, so not unexpected).

ps I didn't finish in the top 50, but then that was more to do with running over time, than ability to ride the off-road bits!

In this sort of weather you have to read the check descriptions very carefully and try to hit as many of the offroad bits as poss going downhill, and also work out the shortest offroad route in [not always compatable options] .
That's basic technique and very relevent to the northern area.
I set everything including the points, with the exception of 1 which was Graham's idea. He and I also discussed 26 and moved it a bit.
The area would be an hour or so faster per day in the dry. I always set offroad events. Gary opted out of 20 and took the road on sunday, losing 20 points he couldn't make back. I always try to make the road the slower option.
I know the area and knew it would be very hard. My apologies to those who expected an enjoyable jaunt along country lanes, my events aren't like that.

Although in summer with the warm Welsh sun and thanks to the horse fraternity some of the seas of mud (aka CP15 etc) become teeth jarring and bone shaking nightmares which are almost equally unrideable. Yes it can dry out in Wales!

I did point out in the description that 15 was cr*p.
However it would seem that a lot of people didn't actually peruse my verbiage with much care.
I tried to take the lottery out of the route plan; being pinned against a wall by an irate and wound up Houligan is not something I'd wish to repeat[Kington 99], although he was entirely justified.

We did the mountains on the first day and most of the north on the second day and the north felt easier than the mountains (more rideable terrain if you got the contours right). Also the hills was smaller and less steep so it was a bit more continuous. It shows good planning in an event when you get the give out and there are 3 or 4 routes possible to get the same score as opposed to one obvious route.
Note: CP26 was 'a nice janunt down country lanes'. Just took a while to get to.

Thanks for the feedback on my question on riding/pushing. I've spent hours looking over the winners route, and now realise the error of my ways. JERRY, we'll still be back next time for more pain and misery!

Does anyone have any good event photos, from the campsite, start, finsih etc? Had to sacrifice the camera in favour of another Go-Bar. Send me a mail if anyone can oblige. Thanks

I have some photos of the event both days but better ones of sat and camp.

Karen, I notice the email address, Are you planning to put them on the site?

I started with the northern checkpoints and like Chris did them anti-clockwise. A great start but hard work. What else could I have expected. Who can complain about how hard it is - surely that is the whole point?

Many thanks to all who organised and marshalled. Solo was a great idea and I look foprward to the next.

Oh yes, the tent. It is draughty but so light and easy to pitch - a very good buy. Karen, please can I have one of the photos!!

We will put an event report up in the next few days inc. pics

As a walker (with no connection to the Challenge) I was wandering in the Begwns area (Sat) & Black Mountains (Sun) and came across a number of you taking part in this years event. Without fail you were all friendly and courteous (despite the state some of you seemed to be in!). Your enthusiasm for the event was evident. Made a refreshing change from encounters with the horse riding/pony treking fraternity. Well done.

Had a great time on my first event and as a solo enjoyed the banter at camp and even riding (walking) round - can't fault the organisation and especial thanks to those nice people who at the 11 hour made a light tent that fitted into my pack!! I was full of trepidation when I got back from buying maps 160 and 161, having visions of 700m climbs and controls at the neck of each valley - they were only 500 metre climbs and the controls were on the end of each ridge!! Didn't go north - but still found plenty of mud.... Will be back (although the Road Club shorts have disintegrated.....ha!)

Why did several of the solo entries decide to flaunt the rules and dump bike and sac at the roadside and run along the bridleways to several of the northern checkpoints. I appreciate that many of the checkpoints involved lots of pushing but thats the nature of the event in those mud conditions. If they don't like the rules they can always enter the Saunders or KIMM or do we have to go back to marshals at most checkpoints. They are only cheating themselves.

I know this rule exists, but I'm not really sure why. It is extremely important that teams of two stay together but not really important from a safety issue that they take their bikes with them.
There has been quite a lot of discussion about this in the Trailquest forum and people in general seem to take quite a lenient view of say leaving ones bike to run the odd couple of hundred metres.
Checkpoint 30 was thorn infested near the top due to recent hedge trimming. I pulled clear what I could when I put in the clicker, but I must admit that I would have broken the rules had I done an in and out from above.
There's two ways of dealing with this
1 Put the checks where people are not tempted to break the rule [I'm at fault here as I didn't do this]
2 Change the rule
I personally don't like tempting people to break the rules, so perhaps I should have thought this one out a bit better.

Andy,

I can only speak for myself, despite the fact
that you seem to find it convenient to pigeon
hole all the solos together (does that make
you a soloist?) - I took my bike to all the
checkpoints because I know the rule.
Maybe the people you saw didn't know the rule
- Did you ask them? Did you point out the error
of their ways at the time? I know there were a
few solos that haven't done Polaris before so
maybe they didn't. Are you sure that it was
solos since you always saw more than one of
them at once? Maybe it was a pair that were
not only dumping their bikes but separating a
bit more than you would have liked.

Personally I don't mind what the rule is either
way so long as it is clear. There were
marshals around and I assume they would
have done something about it if they had seen
it - it is worth enforcing the rules.

I'm a bit more worried about the fact that you
had to pointedly note that it was solos (it really
was more than one wasn't it?) doing this. I
guess there are some people that just like to
pigeon hole other people for the purposes of
whinging - yes you Andy!

I'm a solo newbie, and wasn't aware of such a rule.
The thing is, how close does your bike have to be? Do you have to physically touching it whilst dibbing? I dumped my bike about 50 feet from check point 32. There was a muddy swamp between there and the visible checkpoint which would have been stupid and pointless to drag your bike though.
So is that an unreasonable distance to walk from your bike? I didn't feel like I was cheating myself or anyone else, just using common-sense.

Personally, providing that it's self-powered, I wouldn't be bothered how some-one got to a checkpoint.
If they can run to a checkpoint quicker than biking, then good luck to them.

Having said that, I'm assuming that we're talking about people using bridleways, rather than dumping their bike to use a footpath.

BTW the only cheating I saw was by *teams* at CP13 by taking the footpath across the river, and CP15 by taking the footpath at the youth hostel and then backing round to look like they've come from the bridleway.
T'sk - teams you're only cheating yourselves ;-)

The route across the river to 13 was fine (the
one I, and most people, were using anyway). If
you look carefully at the map you'll see that
there is an "other route with public access"
there and I checked with Jerry before the start
to make sure it was OK to use it. The marked
footpath is further along than that.

I thought CP 15 was marshalled?

Did it involve getting your feet wet? Yuk!. The people I saw were taking the route over the bridge which as far as i can see is a footpath.


At CP15 I took a the wrong path and ended up down at the youth hostel where I saw a team comming up though the hostel and up the footpath. Not wanting to be caught using the footpath, I backtracked up the trail found the original bridleway and went back to marshalled CP15. As I got to the CP I could see another team riding off. I asked the marshall if they'd been done for coming up the footpath, but he said they'd come from the other direction. I'm guessing that they veered off the footpath and onto the bridleway, but as I didn't have any evidence, it seemed pointless to raise the matter.

AIUI in TQ there is no uniform 'stay with your bike' rule, although in some events the scorecard is tied to the bike which of course imposes a rigid proximity limit. Either of these systems seems more sensible to me than the polaris rule of staying with the bike (however stupid and pointless it might be in the circumstances), especially if there is no guidance as to what 'with the bike' actually means. But maybe there is, I can't get the rules on the web-site to work. IM(ever-so)HO that rule serves no useful purpose and I can't see anyone complaining if it was to be quietly dropped.

Many thanks for an excellent event, Jeremy.
The routes were well planned - in that you had to use off-road routes to link checkpoints - rather than large road miles with quick out & backs to the checkpoints. Also, they were all in the right places - rather important in an orienteering event. The mud was awful but not your fault. I rode quite a few of those trails (including the Monastery) in the Iron Lemming a few years ago and they were delightful in July!
The electronic scoring was superb. Great not to have to wait 2 hours for provisional results and then find that the positions all change minutes before the anouncements due to score queries! Mind you - I still clipped the score card on the Saturday just to be on the safe side!
See you all at the summer event.
PS: (Plug), I will be posting details about the Manx event on the MMBC web site as things progress.

The mud was a lot better this weekend - in fact I'd go so far as to say it was almost unreconizable. I was out running, and passed checkpoints 6, 4 and 3. No traces of 6 or 3 - but 4 was still there, e-punch and all! I very nearly collected it myself, but thought I'd better just let Jerry know (in case he'd forgotten).

JonB thanks for correcting Ian about the river crossing to CP15.
Got the feet wet, but managed to temporarily clean the bike anyway.

I thought CP 4 was the one that went
missing?

Well it was there on Saturday - maybe somebody put it back

I put a new one in on sat night
Due to vehicle problems I will be taking them out this week though as I have been given the nearest thing to a go cart I have ever driven [as a courtesy car] it's tails I crash, heads I have my licence taken away

I took my bike to within a few metres of each control, and it didn't really occur to me not to.

At first I thought the rule should be to leave the option open to take bike or not.

BUT a manifestation of this would leave the option for people like me to run thro several controls if I thought that was quicker, and then I could connect using footpaths!!!

Let's keep the bike with us. It's a bike event.

As a solo here's a couple of interesting disadvantages. 1) Steve Heading compared their split times with mine. They were faster on the road and gated roads and tracks. Slipstreaming and gate cooperation better for pairs. 2) As pairs head towards a CP, the stronger rider can get ahead of the partner and clip and collect the partner on the way out, thus saving about a minute, and maybe up to 10 mins in a day.

And an advantage of Solo - the decision making process is faster

Re Ian's comments about CP15, I was one of the Marshals there, and it was very difficult to see competitors more than 20 metres away due to the mist or even to know where the footpath was.

We approached the CP from via the Youth Hostel, as we were walking, and once you went through the gate, it was difficult to work out where the path went. We followed the wrong track (the one which I assume you hit from the other way) and found ourselves about 400m East of the CP. In all it took about half an hour from leaving the car to finding the CP (and that was without draggin bikes through the mud!), so if anyone did actually try to take the 'short-cut', they would no doubt have lost time.

I did later in the day try to find where the footpath was, but couldn't actually find a decent track on the ground which seemed to agree with the map. The best I could find petered out into boggy heath, and certainly didn't have any tyre tracks on it.

A few teams approaching from the East (as most did) took the wrong turn onto an unmarked track towards the Youth Hostel as you did Ian.

Some of these teams turned round and returned to the bridleway on that track, others crossed the footpath and continued on this track - below and South of the CP, but out of sight due to the mist - until it rejoined the bridleway West of the CP, and then back-tracked along the bridleway to the CP.

As far as we could tell, the number of teams doing this was very limited. As the mist didn't clear until about 3pm (2.5 hours after the last competitor) it wasn't actually possible to see anyone doing this.

We did also on a couple of occaisions through the day stamp out all the tyre tracks taking the wrong fork off the bridleway, hoping that people would follow the tracks on the bridleway, but there were still some that took it.

From what we could tell looking at the ground afterwards, only one set of tyre tracks went through the gate, but then turned round, before they reached the farmyard.

The only competitor that did come this way was on foot, as his teamate was at the YH with a broken wrist.

We did our best, and as far as we could tell, no-one actually went through the farmyard, which is probably the most important part of the CP being marshalled.

I don't think anyone could possibly blame you if people did. Thanks very much for your efforts.
A lot of people were looking for the check adjacent to the hostel, but the map showed it to be at least 100 metres from there and up several contour lines.
I originally had the check further up the track where the track is narrow, but Graham thought it better opposite the Hostel where we could police the footpath. I agreed with him but never expected that density of mist, which isn't very common. Also there is no actual footpath line above the hostel that corresponds with the map.
When looking at red ROW one always has to have in mind that the map is showing a legal route, not neccessarily a physical one.

Since so much of the event was unrideable (therefore a hiking event) I think next time we are in this area we'll pack 2 airfix model MTBs in our rucsacs and use walking boots :-)
Not an event for us this one as we like riding our bikes, so we went to the pub instead.

The worst patch was immediately above the event centre, that put some people off, beyond that it was OK apart from those places that I'd said were poor.
One cannot please everyone
If one runs a road event a lot of people don't bother again.
If one runs it offroad in the UK then one is at the mercy of the weather.
If I had run a road event then neither the police or BBNP would have co-operated, anyway I hate them [road events]

Steve, thanks for the comments about the check point. It must have been a pretty miserable place to be stuck all day!
As for the mud, Well it's character building.. It wasn't much worse than than my local bridleways and the unexpected sunshine on the second day made up for it.
Still seem to have a lot of the welsh countryside embedded in my living room carpet though ;-)

Actually it wasn't that bad. The mist was a bit of a downer, and a shame it didn't clear until so late on. Apart from that I had a good weekend.
It was interesting seeing some of the teams (we only had about 50 on Sat and 25 on Sun, so not very busy), and there was only really one or two who weren't friendly and polite. (And it was generally the ladies(?)
Even the odd frontrunner who we actually saw would chat (very) briefly and was polite.
Others even sat around for 1/2 hour or so to eat, plan or just complain about the mud!
Atleast Sunday was clear and we had a great view.
I don't know what I'd have thought if the weather had been worse - though I may have actually got the tent out the bag.
Hopefully for the Summer Event I'll be competing, if not then I'll be back to marshal.

Hi Steve
Thanks for marshalling and we did have a good time back at base
With luck I will be back from the desert for July and see you all.
Yes Jerry a number of teams did pack early due to the mud but all in all you did a great job but I was never happy about CP15

What, you knew it was utterly clagged up then?
I didn't realise how badly it had deteriorated, but then I didn't know a local had started using it for pony trekking over the winter until 2 days before.
The last few years it hasn't been nearly that deep.

Very true Gary, but your comment "And an
advantage of Solo - the decision making
process is faster" always leaves open faster
but not better.

regards John H

Yeah you roady you.