At 7.45am as my wife and I started to put out the controls it was bright, cold and frosty but the forest looked just stunning in the frost and sunshine. Furthermore at that time the ground was frozen and this made cycling fairly easy and straight forward.

Luckily it remained dry and bright and we were rewarded with 41 competitors several taking part in an MTBO event for the first time. The first start time was at 10.00am and by this time the frost was easing and the ground not quite so easy to ride on. However Hurn is not technical, it is fairly flat but does have an intricate path system and although there were several muddy sections we were always going to see fast times.

On the Long course (10K straight line)  Ifor Powell (BOK) set off early and returned with what I thought would be the winning time of 40.51 although Ifor did admit to a couple of errors out on the course.

Andrew Snell (SARUM) and Jason Falconer (WSX) then returned with times of 40.10 and 39.39 respectively but that was not the winning time as Stuart Lynch had an excellent ride finishing in 35.52 to record by several minutes the best time of the day.

Long Course 9.8km

Short Course 5.4km

On the short course (5K straight line) Liz Snell (SARUM) won in a time of 37.32 and it was good to see to 2 newcomers to the sport in Tamer Bereiki and Adam Rhodes from Kingston Maurward College taking 2^nd and 3^rd places in 43.32 and 43.42 respectively.

Everyone seemed to enjoy the courses and the weather was kind to make the riding relatively straight forward. Many thanks to those select band of WIM members who helped on the day.

We hope to see everyone at our next event on Sunday 15^th January at Inside Park, Blandford Forum, Dorset which is a private estate with a much more technical aspect and numerous intricate and small paths to negotiate. This event will take place in the afternoon with start times from 13.30 to 14.30. A Foot O event will take place in the morning and a Foot O night event at dusk.

Trevor Bridle