Vic MTBO Series winds up at Muckleford

Monday, 27 November 2017

Vic MTBO Series #5 Muckleford

The forest was starting to dry out after some exceptionally green growth in early Spring. A downpour earlier in the week freshened things up but the forecast was for a warm weekend as Helen and I set out to set the controls in the Muckleford Forest. The map was last used for MTBO in 2012 and has become popular with the local MTB groups. There are now lots of single tracks, some less visible than others. Three trips to Muckleford for remapping with my Garmin tracker assisted by Strava helped me locate new tracks. These can easily be missed unless you know what you are looking for. (Strava is a website and mobile app used to track activity via satellite navigation. It is a good site to collect gpx files of routes which can be uploaded onto OCAD).

Peter Hill lives near the map and was happy to take up my offer to vet the map and courses. He assured me that there are more tracks out there. Peter did a great job with his amendments and course suggestions. The new tracks helped to give riders more route choice options and gave some nice riding areas.

Peter and Judy Hill put some if the Nillumbik Emus organisers up for the night. This was greatly appreciated as Helen and I didn’t finish setting the courses and digging the dunny loos till 7:30 pm.

The attendance was down. Perhaps people were put off by the torrential storm that hit the southern parts of Victoria on Saturday. There was no rain at Muckleford all weekend, so the tracks were fast and dry.

The riders who took part were in the most part delighted with the courses and the terrain. There were tales of misfortune. Mark Valentine burnt through a tyre on his bike on the way to the event and had to scratch. The tyre was touching the exhaust. Ralph Koch smashed a derailleur. Glenn Charlton had two punctures with the second finishing his day. It was great to see Andrew and Sarah Campbell, all the way from Queensland, with their trailer camper van.

Alex Randall won C1 easily, riding the 36km in 104 minutes. Times were very tight among the other finishers with a spread of just 11 minutes between Carolyn Jackson, 2^nd in 125 minutes, Scott Gavens, Anthony Jones, Steven Law and Ed Steenbergen.

Peter Cusworth won C2 with BK riders taking out the first 3 places. Leigh Privett travelled down from Beechworth to win C3 and Blake Gordon from Ballarat was a clear winner on C4. Rebecca Shaw collected 12 controls in winning the score course and Mia Gavens won the course for the littlies.

Rob Edmonds – Organiser

Results, Splits and Final Series Standings