Plzen Wrap-up

The Czech MTBO finished successfully for me – my 2 fellow competitors made such big mistakes on Day 1 that they couldn’t catch me. I did my best to ‘lose it’ on the third race with two big route choice errors and they proved that they can ride much faster than me, but they too didn’t have clean races so I had a 25 minute start on the last day in the chasing start.  (Fastest over the previous races starts first and the others start according to their cumulative time behind.) As it turned out I had a faster time than either of them in the last race so definitely a winner!

The third woman had a DSQ on Day 1 so wasn’t on the podium.

The main disappointment this year was the lack of variety in the terrain compared with the lovely areas used 2 years ago. Day 1 and 4 ( and also the CZE Relays on Friday which I skipped but other of the Aussies entered) used the same forest and the same exit route from forest to finish. And Day 3 which was in a different location, still had similar working pine forest. All virtually no single track and the break from forest roads was largely very junky forest rides mapped as dotty tracks.

The Day 3 location was however very picturesque – based on 2 grassy soccer fields high above the village of Dobric with fields between us and the village. The organisers even moved the beer tent to be at this new event centre!

I didn’t do much sightseeing in the Plzen area this year. By the time we got ‘home’, did the washing, had an early dinner, and I went back to the awards ceremony each night, I didn’t have the energy.  Besides, I saw most of the sights that interested me 2 years ago.  A couple of photos from the Friday foray are in the previous blog.

Now moved on to Prague late Sunday.