Czech MBO 5-Day

Saturday, 7 July 2007

The Czech MBO 5-days is similar to any large multi-day event.  Think the Aussie Easter 3-day on bikes.  Great organisation, lots of people, great maps and tricky courses.  The Pilsen crew have a reputation for extremely well organised races which retain a healthy sense of fun.  An example of this is the orienteering triathlon relay this evening with 3 person teams competing in swim-o, mbo and foot-o.

The format of the 5-day is middle distance, long distance, sprint and finally 2 more middle distance races.  The last race with a chasing start.

Today was the sprint.  About 5 km long and with 26 check points it was extremely intense.  It was one of the large parks on the edge of Pilsen.  Even the slightest hesitation dropped you places in the results.  The key was to keep on top of the map and maintain a smooth flow.  Trying to go fast only ended up in tears!  I say this from bitter experience and discovered that sprint orienteering requires a different approach.  Sometimes check points were only 50 metres apart.

 The biggest difference one noticed here in the forest is there are lots more tracks and the ground is soft and often muddy.  This makes average speeds a lot lower than Australia and winners are riding 18-19 kmh, perhaps 5 kmh slower than home.  The tracks are generally much bumpier too, which makes it harder to read your map whilst riding.

My rides for the first 2 days were quite average.  Lots of mistakes annoyingly in the middle distance then a much smoother ride the next day in the long, but fell foul of a misplaced check point.  There is still plenty of fine-tuning to do to get rid of all the mistakes and make the races smooth and fast.