So I entered into the ACT MTBO long course championships, having done Rogaining, Orienteering and Cyclegains, how hard can it be?
The “long course” for the soft 50+ people was 21km, go figure, it didn’t sound long so I decided to ride out to Pierces Creek and get some extra distance in the legs.
Probably mistake #1.

MTBO is orienteering on your bike and all the checkpoints are on the track, so no jumping off your bike and running into the bush, this means as long as you find the tracks/roads you find the controls, this does mean that every second counts.
Best to have a rotating map board so you can navigate two control points ahead…. there is no stopping except for dipping your electronic timer stick into the control gadget.

As you can see from the split timing chart, I was leading early until I made a couple of errors… I was riding fast enough but need to improve my speed navigation and probably a couple of route choices.

Taking the high road and mis-reading numbers on the map and heading to the same control twice.. (mistake #2 +7 minutes)
Missing a turn and ending up in a dead-end single track forced ,me to bush bash back to the road…(mistake #3 +6 minutes)
Still managed to set a few more fastest split times at the end but then it was already too late.

This MTB Orienteering is definitely something more 3FIDIs should look into as it is perfectly suited to riders.
Usually the courses are shorter still and sometimes in Bruce Ridge for 15km or so, plenty of wrong turn to take there.

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