Polaris Challenge, Summer 2010

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 22:41:00 GMT

Over the weekend of the 12th and 13th of June I participated in my first ever organised cycling event, the titular Polaris Challenge. It's been a while now, but finally I have completed this write-up of my experience. Most of the delay comes down to crunching data, as usual… I've had to write and modify code to get the maps and graphs ready.

They call the challenge a mountain bike "orienteering" event, although it is closer in nature to what we call rogaining[1] back home in Australia. In a nutshell: a large area of land is scattered with checkpoints, each of these has an associated score, the aim of the game is to accumulate as many points as you can in a set time limit. The checkpoints for the summer 2010 challenge were given out in the week before the event. Being what I am I promptly fed the point list through an OCR program (it was supplied as an image), found some code to convert the GB grid-refs to lat,lon coordinates, and created KML (for the web) and GPX (for my GPS) files. I can thus show you the checkpoints for the summer 2010 challenge in all the digital glory of Google Maps.

View Larger Map

The catch of the event is that you don't learn how many points each checkpoint is worth until the clock is ticking, and they're different each day. Pre-planning a route isn't necessarily useful! However, a familiarity with the terrain covered by the map is invaluable, while never as good as actual time on the ground a bit of map study is worthwhile. The two maps below show the points distribution on Saturday then Sunday. The general gist is that the points encouraged riders to head to the northeast on Saturday, but more to the northwest on Sunday. (The tent marker is the basecamp we rode out of and had to return to within the time limit on both days.)

View Larger Map

I got a lift up to the Peak District with Dave, a Hitchin local who's part of a group who have done several Polaris Challenges over the years. The trek up to the basecamp from Hitchin didn't take long.[2] One of the great advantages of the White Peak area is that it is quite central within the UK. Just as the last light was vanishing from the day we pulled up near event HQ in a flat green field adorned with the occasional cowpat. I had my little Terra Nova Laser up pretty quickly despite the dark. However, I was far slower than my companion was with his "pop up" tent from ARGOS. My tent may be a lot lighter, and probably far more sturdy in a gale, but for this sort of event I think Dave's quick-but-heavy option wins the day.

Campsite - Saturday Morning

Registration in the main marquee was quick and convivial, a good laugh. As an added bonus there was a bar, no great surprise, but this bar had a couple of decent real ales. Clearly I'd found myself amongst the right sort of crowd! Given the circumstances it was really a night for just a single beer before bed though, and soon I was settled into my tent.

Saturday

Saturday dawned, at about 4:30-bloody-AM in fact, damn it. That's summer camping for you. The extra time in the morning meant I could properly mark up my secondary set of maps. What I'd done is ordered a full laminated map of the area which I'd hung up on the wall to study and mark with the checkpoints. Additionally I'd ordered a paper map, this one I chopped into A4-ish sized sheets and laminated double-sided. For a typical OS Landranger map (191 in this case) this made 6 laminated sheets. I think it would be even less, and more optimally split, if I'd thought to wait until the checkpoints were released before cutting up the map as the range covered by the checkpoints was not the entire map area. (Lesson learnt for next time.) I also had a single A4 "overview" map, which was a colour printout of my Google map showing all the checkpoints. I marked this one up with the checkpoint values each day and used it for high-level planning.

Laminated maps

Throughout the weekend I saw people awkwardly clinging onto the full folded up laminated map while cycling, or trying to refold one and clamp it back onto a map holder. In the end I think my cut-n-laminate approach worked very well. I mounted my little stack of maps on my handlebars using the cover of a clipboard. While the cover doesn't have the clip it does have a clear pocket at the bottom that the sheets all slide into, a heavy duty dog clip then secures everything at the top. I made 3 pairs of holes in the clipboard and cable-tied it to my handebars. Slightly to the left, so there was space to mount the GPS on the far right. The clipboard was held horizontal by a cork cable-tied to the bar on the far-left which provided about the same hight as the handlebar clamp on the stem.

The clipboard arrangement held up well for the ride. Even surviving me going over the handlebars, which left it bent but quite intact. The only complaint I'd have about the arrangement is that going downhill on-road at up to 60 km/h it really had to be held down with one hand, otherwise it bent upward alarmingly! I'm sure I could have got past 65km/h if it wasn't there, damn wind resistance! ;)

Time starts now...

You start the event in groups of about twenty spread over two hours from 08:00 to 10:00. After a quick summary of the rules and notification of any checkpoints that had been removed from the course – checkpoint 34 on day one, "due to a grumpy farmer" – we were given the location of the "hand out". This was around a 5 minute ride down the road at the bridge where the Pennine Bridleway passes over.

At the handout point you receive a list of the checkpoint points allocations. On the first day it was clear that the aim should be to reach the upper-right of the area. I decided to take a route swinging up via some "easy" checkpoints to the south-east. This was to be the making of my 2nd Polaris Challenge lesson: don't bother with the low pointers. In this case especially, as, while they were on relatively flat ground across fields, all the riding was cross-country and there were a lot of gates to stop, open, pass through, then close. Slow and irritating. I abandoned my plan before reaching checkpoint 13, and powered up to the north-east skipping 14 and 15 as well.

Once in the north-east I did a circuit through as many checkpoints as I dared within my remaining time. One particularly formidable one was CP27. I thought a quick nip across a valley was the sure-fire choice. On the way down it was steep and rocky with a lot of riders coming up on foot, on the way up the other side it was steep and loose and most of the way up I was on foot! I came away from that checkpoint by taking the long way around on a bridleway following the contours, looping back to the other side of the valley on the road. More than three the times the distance, but maybe less time to traverse. That was my Polaris Challenge lesson 3: gentle slopes, following contours, and taking road routes are generally preferable to steep off-road "short cuts". Certainly with my leg, fitness, and skill levels anyway.

After CP36 I considered my options and decided to head back towards base rather than head further away. CP12 was worth a tempting 50 points and in light of the fact that I managed to fit in a couple of 10 pointers on the way back I really should have attempted CPs 12 and 3 for a combined total of 80 points! I decided to head on on to CP9 instead. The ride up to the Wellington Monument was an easy one. I decided next to cut down into the valley and head to CP23. It was coming down from the monument that I went far too fast into a corner. It would have been OK except for the fact that the edge of the track was a muddy rut. My front wheel sunk in the mud, only a couple of inches, but enough to stop me rolling. The suspension dived, I flipped straight over the handlebars followed by the bike which landed on top of me while I skidded along the embankment. Luckily the embankment was more dirt than anything and I only suffered some grazing on my arm and a small cut on one knee. My map holder was bent in half though! A couple of walkers nearby were mortified, but I reassured them that I was fine, got back on the bike, and continued downhill – a little more carefully.

Very minor injury

I chose to squeeze in a couple of 10-pointer CPs on the return route and still made it back to basecamp within the 7 hour limit… with just under 4 minutes time remaining. (I so could have done 12 and 3 instead!) I was dead exhausted, probably having spent nearly 6.5 hours on the bike during the day… I made it! The most time I've ever cycled in one day before would have been about 4 hours … leisurely cycling over relatively flat ground. My GPS tells me I'd covered 79km, which doesn't seem much, but over that 79km I'd also covered about 1900m total ascent[3].

Slightly dirty bike

Unsurprisingly my score for the day was a bit pants. I racked up 225 points, coming in 90th of 197 teams out that day. For comparison 10 teams (9 singles and 1 pair) scored over 400, with the highest score of 435 being not far off double mine! The average score was just under 210. I was content with my result though, given that it was my first time doing anything like this on a bike. I had learnt from my mistakes and could try and make a better go of it the next day.

The image below shows elevation over distance as recorded by my GPS unit for Saturday's cycling. The elevation is exaggerated of course. The elevation axis is at a magnification of 10x the distance axis. To view a much larger image showing elevation against distance at a 1:1 ratio click on the image. (The image is an SVG image, you'll need a modern web browser in order to see it properly - i.e. Microsoft IE 7 isn't any good.)

And this was my route for the day… I could have made some much better decisions!

View Larger Map

Recoup

On Saturday evening the England vs USA FIFA World Cup match was on. The Polaris Challenge organisers had put in the extra effort to bring in a projector to show the match in the marquee for the many footy fans. However, my companions were keen on a decent dinner and a few pints to put the day behind them. They'd come in with only 15 points! This was due to them taking nearly an hour longer than the allotted time. Dave was suffering from a bit of bronchitis and challenged the challenge a little too hard perhaps. But it was a noble effort – they bagged the furthest checkpoint and, without penalty, 335 points. We found a decent pub in Ashbourne for dinner and did end up watching the USA v England game, a fairly dull 1-all draw, somewhat disappointing for the Poms.

Sleep was elusive. The event band was playing in the marquee nearby until midnight, and the sun punctually rose before 5AM (at precisely 04:43 my GPS says.) I rather liked the band in fact, I packed it in after listening to a couple of decent Pink Floyd covers. A good end to a tiring day.

Sunday

Another early one, welcoming in the morning with an excellent bowl of porridge with stewed rhubarb. Catering for the event was handled by Greengages with their huge green kitchen on wheels. These guys were brilliant, totally unexpected value for money for an event with a captive-audience. Not "cheap and cheerful" muck though, it was top nosh. Proper sausages, hand-made sausage rolls, dry-cure bacon, excellent flapjacks (ahhhh… carbs), filter coffee, the menu went on … The coffee was very weak from the point-of-view of an hardcore espresso drinker – but it had good flavour.

Sunday involved a "mere" 5 hours of cycling, as opposed to Saturday's 7. My companions opted out as Dave was a little concerned about his bronchitis and decided to give his lungs a rest. Dave was kind enough to be willing to hang around at basecamp while I did the Sunday ride though.

The riding day started out a bit drizzly, but my lightweight Montane Pertex jacket kept me warm, if not dry. It turned out to be the right choice to take the Pertex jacket though, rather than my waterproof eVent one. The day cleared up, but a chilly wind kept things rather crisp[4]. Perfect conditions for Pertex, which has the advantage of being very lightweight and breathable.

Sunday's points distribution didn't encourage trekking quite so far away from base as Saturday's. The arc of checkpoints from north to west had been given nice high point values. Feeling eager, and liking the look of the terrain, I put behind me the plan of "having a casual pootle around the hills" and powered straight up via CP21, one I was familiar with from day before, then through Bakewell to bag as many high-pointers as I could. The day went rather well and included the best views of the weekend. Especially on the way up to CP33 where the route uphill on a byway offered exquisite rolling vistas to the south.

I bagged my planned lot of checkpoints in good time then decided to take a final stretch down into the Dove valley for one final high-pointer. It almost did me in; my brain seemed to have stopped functioning properly, I sped down the road past the bridleway to the checkpoint at about 50km/h – not up to my usual navigational standards. When I reached the checkpoint I went straight past it, over the river, and started a hard slog up a grassy slope on the other side. Halfway up I thought to myself: hmm, wasn't there supposed to be a bridge involved? I turned around, bagged the checkpoint (much to the bewilderment and probable amusement of a couple of American tourists I'd passed on the bridge) and began the slow slog out of the valley. One final hard uphill, when the GPS said I was doing only 5km/h I went literally "push bike" for about 100 metres of the steepest ascent. (I was doing under 5km/h peddling, pushing the bike was slightly faster.)

The rest is dull really. That final push out of the valley then "hammering" it back to basecamp. Road, Pennine Bridleway, then road – unexpectedly making it back within my 5 hours – 1 minute and 1 second to spare! In the end it was a much better day than Sunday, finishing 54 of 178 – not a contender, but a result I'm entirely happy with. I'd scored 210 for the day, the top score was 364, and the average was 175.

Here's a graph again, elevation over distance for Sunday. My total ascent this day was about 1600m over a distance of about 63km.

And the map, the direction of travel is counter-clockwise from the basecamp.

View Larger Map

Looking at this map I'd say a better strategy may have been to do the route in reverse. The advantage being that the higher density of checkpoints would be nearer the end then. That said, I came in just within time anyway so it probably wouldn't have made a difference to me.

Retrospective

My score over the two days put me at 70th of 201 participants (including those who did one day but not the other.) As a first-timer and someone who'd never done anywhere near 7+5 hours of serious riding before I think I did OK. I went into the challenge thinking I'd be happy to be ranked about half-way, and I did a little better than that in the end. There's age/gender-group rankings as well, but I don't think these are of much interest. I came 17th of 61 (participating in both days) in "senior", but I'm right at the bottom of the 30-40 age range. Being older is clearly no hindrance though, two of the top three spots at the end of the weekend were taken by "veterans"! (A 40-60 age bracket.)

I'm certainly keen to do the Polaris Challenge again. I have already started formulating plans to prepare for next year. First: do more long-distance mountain biking. I think my fitness and endurance is what I can focus on to the most benefit. Route choosing is also something to work on, but the only real way to work on that is to do more Polaris Challenges! (My general navigational skills are decent, walking and maps are amongst my favourite things.) I could certainly do with weighing about 10kg less. Following on from that, and much less significant, I could drop some weight on the bike kit. I'm not talking ridiculous measures such as titanium bolts of course. However, I could have done without the mudguards, especially the rear one – a pair of cycle shorts with a waterproof arse was recommended as an alternative. I could probably also knock more than a kilo off by replacing the cheapo factory wheels on the bike. Finally, my toolkit and spares may have been a bit over the top; I never even had an opportunity to use any of it.

Some lessons learnt:

Cut up the map after the checkpoint list is released
Don't waste time on the small stuff, power to the highest density of high-score checkpoints and bag as many as possible, perhaps bag some little ones on the way back to base if you have slack time
Long routes with more gradual slopes, especially on roads or byways, are nearly always better than bridleways running perpendicular to the contours :)
Muesli bars suck, super-concentrated "Go" is the way, caffeinated "Shot Bloks" are my personal life-saver (About 4 hours into the ride I started getting what was probably a lack-of-caffeine related headache, I popped some of these that Dave had given me to try and felt great about 5 minutes later. Ah, the life of an addict! I just bought a box full of these as soon as I got home)

ENDE

My one sentence summary: The Polaris Challenge was bloody excellent, a well-organised, quality experience, I learnt much and hope to make it back again next year to learn more!

The challenge itself doesn't seem to have a huge online presence. I guess there isn't much of a geek/blogger/challenge intersection. The event website itself is pretty basic and lacks history, but there are a couple of sites around with some worthwhile info:

The official Polaris Challenge site: http://www.polarischallenge.com/
Singletrack article on this challenge: Internet Armchair Feature: Polaris Challenge
A few polaris tips by Mark Green (wish I'd found this one before I did polaris!)
Photos from this challenge: Galleries from Polaris Challenge 2010, photos of me:

Coming down to CP22
Another coming down to CP22
Coming back in the gate at the end of Saturday
Arriving at the Sunday give-out point
Finally all over...
The photo website is a bit crap, and the photos are only available for a limited time. I'd have bought a couple of the ones of myself but they're simply not worth anything near £7.45 to me, they're not great photos anyway. I'd consider paying that much for the whole set.

[1] Rogaining doesn't seem to exist in England, but has a fairly strong following in Australia. The nature of it is just like the challenge but without the bikes and with a much higher risk of snakes and dropbears – I did a bit of it way back in highschool.

[2] There was one minor delay as we had a flat on the way. This seems trivial enough, except that Dave had never changed a tyre before, the wheels had a locknut, and the locknut adaptor didn't fit his tyre wrench! I went a bit McGuyver and shimmed the wrench with some parts from a disassembled spare bike chain link, it wasn't easy going but after some experimentation and a little time we were on the road again.

[3] I don't particularly trust GPS measured elevation, I've stood on the spot and watched the reading fluctuate over time by about 4 metres. It's fine for getting your current approximate height, however, I expect the error range is rather large – especially over 7 hours worth of summed point differences. On day 1 I measured exactly 1978m ascent and 1982m descent (despite beginning and ending at the same elevation), and on day 2 1671m ascent and 1669m descent. I'm calling this about 1900m and 1600m, respectively, take it or leave it.

[4] I grew up in Australia, the ambient temperature has to be above 25C before I feel warm, and well above 30C before I worry about being hot. That's not even considering windchill, which must have put the temperature at about 15C on the day.

Hitchin XC Cycle Route

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 11:03:00 GMT

Hitchin is far from being an XC cycling Mecca of England, but if you have to live here (and it isn't a bad place to live) there is some worthwhile ground for keeping your cycling legs going. This short entry merely presents my encoding of a fun little 30ish kilometre (~20 mile) cycle loop to the west of Hitchin, particularly good for XC "mountain" bikers or cyclocross riders I'd say, but certainly lacking in any real challenge. But we're on the edge of the flat expanses of the mid-East here, barely in the chalk foothills of the Chilterns, so we just have to make do with what we have.

The route given here is mostly taken from a route shown to me by a local mountain biker, with a couple of deviations and additions here and there. I've pored over the OS Explorer map I have of the area and haven't yet found a better route that doesn't involve significantly more road riding. You want to avoid road riding around here as you share the roads with arseholes from either end of the socio-economic spectrum, boy-racers in souped-up trashmobiles and bankers in various pre-souped expensive cockmobiles.

You go through some fun ups and downs. Up Chalk Hill before hitting Great Offley, then a fun loose gravelly downhill into Lilley a little while later. The ride from there up to the edge of the South Beds. Golf Club is mostly uphill on a slight gradient, but worth it for the view over Luton and the little downhill to the edge of the golf course. You could skip the golf course leg and cut 3 or 4 km off the route by just heading up Hexton Road from Lilley (I think there's a bridleway in behind Lilley you could get on.) The best downhills of the route begin after Telegraph Hill, the first taking you down onto Hitchin Road, then the second taking you down into Pirton. These are both fast, mostly singletrack, gradual gradient downhills on hard exposed chalk. Keep an eye out for oncoming traffic though, and little old ladies walking their dogs! From Pirton the trail is pretty close to dead flat, cutting into Ickleford on the Icknield way then into Hitchin down Old Hale way. There's more information on the map, each of the little wheel icons has a note.

View Larger Map

I recommend viewing the larger map. You can download the data in KML form here, which can be easily converted into the format of your choice using the tool of your choice — such as gpsbabel.

Yvan Seth's Hole in the Internet

Polaris Challenge, Summer 2010

Saturday

Time starts now...

Recoup

Sunday

Retrospective

ENDE

Hitchin XC Cycle Route