I’ve never been a huge fan of MTBO, so it was a surprise to many when I decided to join in on this trip. For me it was a great opportunity to go on a well organized holiday with a great group of orienteers and the MTBO part was secondary to my holiday. What I didn’t take into account is that I do like orienteering, Mountain biking, travelling to New places and have a bit of a competitive streak.

The Lower SI contingent arrived in Brisbane early and on time but those coming from Auckland had delays due to fog. Martin and I were able to reminisce about our youth which was spent in similar circumstances in our Junior days. When the rest finally turned up and it was action stations, we loaded up and moved out south to Coff’s Harbour.

The trip down had a couple of detours including a side trip to see sunset at the Byron Bay Lighthouse. It was highly recommended by Sally, and we were not disappointed. 

Day 1 in Coffs Harbour was training day, so after building up the bikes and getting them running we loaded up the Vans and took a short trip to Pine Creek mountain bike trails. Marquita had organised a line course and a route choice exercise. The map left a lot to be desired, and did not fill us all with a lot of confidence. Hopefully the NSW Champs map would be much more up to date.

Day 2 (NSW Long Champs) was a leisurely start with us all still on NZ time and the sun coming up at 5am. We had time for a short walk down to the beach before loading up into the vans. The causeway gave quite a nice view of the beach and we even spotted some dolphins. While viewing the dolphins we climbed up onto the big concrete “handbar” blocks to get a better vantage point. Unfortunately for Jason his crocs and socks combo, along with texting while walking lead him to step between two of these blocks. As he did he fell and crashed down hard, and cracking some ribs in the process. Not a great start to the trip!

It was an hour and a half drive to Kempsy where the Long distance was. When we finally arrived we had a bit of a delay due to control placement issues. The planners had only just in the last few weeks been allowed access to the area due to a recent fire, which lead to the last minute changes. With open start time it felt just a bit like a club event back home. The map itself had some interesting areas of single track mixed with a large number of fire roads all well used recently. The Kiwi contingent did pretty well across the board. No major crashes today, but Martin had a tyre blow out at possibly the worst possible place and faced a 6km walk back.

Day 3 was a double day of NSW Middle and Sprint Champs. It was a bright and early start, leaving accommodation at 6:30 then underway fairly close to 8:30 am at Jack’s Ridge MTB Park for the middle distance. The forest here was more temperate rainforest, quite different to the typical eucalyptus forest of the Long. The tracks were plentiful and technical with assorted of structures to negotiate. The courses were also quite long for a middle distance, the Elite courses probably didn’t need the map flip section. 

There was only time for a bit of early lunch, a warm down, then it was time to load up and move out again. There was no time for any sightseeing side trips unfortunately, just straight back to Coffs Harbour for the sprint. The sprint was held around the educational campus on a standard orienteering sprint map. There were some special rules for the event such as you were allowed to ride on open land and some rough/scattered land too. The courses were very tough to decipher, almost like doing a foot sprint with too much speed, all the while trying to keep the map orientated, but also keeping up with it in your head. I found it quite fun, mainly because it suited the purist orienteer more so than those that could ride fast and hard. The most fun part was probably negotiating the centre of the map with sets of stairs, ramps and underpasses!

Day 4 was a “rest” day so that meant it was a late start, some sightseeing, some lunch and some mountain biking back at Jack’s Ridge.

Around mid morning we headed off for a short walk and some lunch at Dorrigo National park. There was quite a high skywalk which was inspected with some trepidation from Georgia the Structural Engineer. Also spotted on the walk was several snakes, a blue tounged lizard and quite a lot of  bush turkeys. Soon after lunch Rob was itching to get back to Jack’s Ridge Mountain Bike park, so off we went. 

Second time around at the bike park was heaps of fun, the only problem we had was getting back to the carpark before it got too dark. On the way home there was just enough time to take a quick sidetrip to Nambucca Heads to catch the final minutes of the sunset.

Day 5 we headed up north to Bom Bom Mountian bike park for some training with a mass start to make it a bit more interesting. This forest was another typical dry looking Eucalypt forest. The map was quite out of date and Marquita put in quite an effort the night before to get all the strava heat map tracks on it! This training was open to the Aussie’s as well and it was well attended, almost more so than the NSW champs! Gonana’s and Snakes on the top of the wildlife bingo list today. 

Day 6 was a well needed rest day, as well as a travel day. The bulk of the group drove up with some short sight seeing sidetrips, while Jason, Tui and Nicola went whale watching and did some more comprehensive sight seeing side trips. We arrived at our accommodation for the remainder of the trip, the “Brookfield Retreat” quite an interesting 60”s style mansion. It was a maze of buildings, including a pool, spa, billiards room, bar, table tennis, and many lounges and dinning areas, perfect for an indoor outdoor sprint. Making a map of the place became Michael Woods prime spare time task for the next few days.

Day 7 was again a non-competition day, so it was spent with a visit to the Koala Sanctuary nearby, then tuning bikes and relaxing ahead of the next 3 days of competition.

 

Day 8, the mass start, much homework was done by some and not enough by others was the order of the day. The race was held at the Brisbane events centre. It consisted of a huge concert hall in the centre and surrounded by parking lots and forest park lands. We all lined up on the start line, each grade heading off at 3 minute start intervals. Special rules for this event meant that we could cross the high-ish grassed curbs between the parking spaces. We were straight into it from the start gun as the first control was 90degrees to the left from the start line which was the triangle.

The results turned out to be a bit controversial in some grades as there were many one way roads and some of the ride vs no ride area were no so distinct. I got the impression the majority of the group was a bit disappointed. I quite like relay/mass start style events really enjoyed it! Despite the grizzling, NZ still ended up with 4 grade wins vs the Aussie’s with an also equal 4 making it a draw.

Martin unfortunately punctured again, but he turned his luck around in the afternoon, beating us all at minigolf, then taking out the win in the Brookfield Retreat indoor/outdoor O, and finally table tennis that evening.

Martin’s luck (skills!) continued through to the next day as he took the first win of the day in the Sprint at Alexandra Hills High School. The map was just a standard foot sprint map blown up in scale, and fairly intricate at that. It was also carnage out there, ironically called a sprint, I actually found there was very little sprinting required and much more technical nav skills. It was really quite fun too, apart from a collison or two, and a magically appearing retaining wall I managed to accidentally ride off at speed. The NZ team ended up with drawed scores 4-4 again

After a short lunch break it was back into business not far away at the Scribbly Gums Mountain bike park. Another eucalypt forest in the suburbs, hot and dry with some interestingly mapped features and control placement. These added a lot to talk about afterwards! That evening we all caught up at the nearby pub for a catchup with the rest of the Kiwi’s not staying at the retreat and the Aussies. 

The final day and the final stage dawned on us with an early start and an early exit from the retreat. The long distance was held at Bayview conservation park, just down the road from the Scribbly Gums area.

Similar terrain again today, except a few more hills on the map. Most of the courses started with some technical trails, then moved through to some true long distance legs, and finished with more technical and hilly trails just when you were feeling the most tired. I think the NZ team sealed the deal with a 3 grades to 5 scoreline much closer fought battle in the ANZ challenge than the 7-1 margin after the middle. 

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Thanks to Rob and Marquita for arranging the trip, booking and choosing the accommodation, planning the training and providing some great trips. Thanks also to Steve Pyatt for managing the NZ team, he did a great job in that respect from my outside point of view. I wasn’t a member of the team, and luckily the challenge rules are based on times rather than placings, I assume because of weasels sneaking their way into the top 4 grade placings on the odd occasion. I may now be a  MTBO convert!