Bike category winners - Euan Best and Robert Ravani
By Robert Ravani
In the lead up to the event I was excited at the chance to take part in an event with the Bests however I was somewhat underdone and knowing that I would be riding with my nephew brought with it certain trepidation, you see Euan was coming off the back of a long training stint that culminated at the Junior World Orienteering Championships. I, on the other hand, was coming off the back of a long stint on the couch.
To help keep things fairly even I got a hold of the map and thought through how to effectively manage our route for the next 4 hours and not fatigue to the point where I would let Euan down, thus no steep inclines or their close relative: Long Grinding Hills. This meant sticking to gradient's and avoiding peaks. Upon first assessment of the map with Lauderdale being a pinch point the layout seemed to preference sticking to either the North or the South, however both sides contained lots of points that were quite close, further to this the Northern side appeared to be a bit more hilly, whilst the Southern side was very spread out but quite flat, in order to balance this we chose a circular route on the Southern side that went around the main hills but didn't venture too far into any area that would require back tracking, and we worked out that the Southern side would take us roughly 2 hours whereupon we could get into the Northern half with lots of points close to the finishing area - which meant we could pick up as many way points as possible until it was time to turn back.
It quickly became apparent after we set off South that something wasn't quite right with Euan's bike, the rear tyre was rubbing against the frame and no amount of adjusting and tightening would hold it in place, after a few goes of trying to resolve the issue we accepted it was not going to behave itself and so long as the rear derailleur didn't get dragged into the spokes or the rear wheel fall off entirely we agreed the bike was compromised but working, if a little harder to pedal.
The route we chose worked out in part due to the tracks being firm and not too boggy or the sand being heavy to ride through, if any of those tracks were hard going we would not have been able to move as easily around the course, but with the fine weather we got pretty lucky, many of the tracks were very firm.
Once we'd completed our Southern route we moved onto the Northern half of the map and then with about 40 minutes to go we were simply assessing how to pick off a few more waypoints without venturing so far out that we wouldn't make it back in time, this was an ongoing balancing act as I was running on fumes just trying to keep up with Euan who was riding strongly.
We made it back with a few minutes to spare and whilst we were tired we were happy with how we had gone, we had a lot of fun cruising around Lauderdale and didn't really think we would have been in with a chance at winning, and it was only following the event that we found out that Euan's bike had a broken rear axle, how that wheel stayed on is a miracle.
Overall it was a great day out and I'd like to thank the organisers for a really fun challenge.