The forecast was not good for what was to be my last MBO of this season at Dalby forest, chilly with lots of showers is what I was told, fortunately it was pleasantly warm with blue skies.

After looking at the league tables I realised that a good result here could lift me a few places up from the fourth I was sitting in at preasant. I was really motivated and was confident I could get a good route to collect most of the controls, I just had to have a but of luck and not make any stupid mistakes.

My planned route was to go north from High Rigg farm, sweep round past Worry Gill and the World Cup course, dropping down the old black route chute to Staindale, all seemed to be going well and I didn’t waste any time finding controls. The techy/rocky chute was fun on the hardtail and seemed a lot worse than when I used to ride it on my full sus. Then it was back up to the top and round past Crosscliff towards the toll road, the trails were pretty dry concidering the weather we have had lately so I was keeping up a good pace and feeling on it.next it was down into Deepdale and back up the other side and south to Rosekirkdale. I dived on to the red route for a while as it was too tempting to ride the trail running paralell when the good stuff took me to where I was heading. The first half of the event seemed quite compact but the second half saw the controls spead over the many riggs and gills to the south, my route seemed to be working well and I had probably only wasted about 2 min due to minor nav errors so I was happy with how things were going.

Soon I was on the home leg climbing up from the woodyard but when I got to the top I could not see the control, I rode up and down where the discription said it should be but deciced to carry on and report in on my return, the very next control was no where to be seen either and I started to question my skills so I decided to ride up the old red route just in case it had been put out in the wrong place, sure enough it had been placed 100m up the trail. Maybe I wasn’t going mad after all! I managed to clear up a few more controls on the way back to High Rigg Farm and the finish. I returned 33s late and only lost one point which is good.

I reported the problem with #17 & 22 and was told the one on the bend was in the wrong place so they were awarding poeple with this but the other was where it was supposed to be but was just not as visible as it could have been so they would not adjust my score due to this. It was a little annoying as it was by far my est result of the year and I only missed collecting three five point controls so would have had a score of 509 with my penalty as opposed to the 489 I actually scored. Not to worry tho as in the big scheme of things it only means a difference of 2 points for the league and as I am unable to do the last round there is nothing more I can do to change the outcome, I’m currently in second in class so maybe I can stay there, only time will tell.