So on the Friday afternoon I headed off to….
Malvern!
Yes I know that’s not in Wales but it is
where the event is based out of, the Three Counties Showground to be exact.
Seeing as last year I had suggested having registration
open on the Friday night to ease the queues on Saturday, I thought I really
ought to turn up and help, so set off on Friday afternoon to take a direct
cross country route to Malvern, via Buckingham, Aynho, Chipping Norton, Moreton
in Marsh, Evesham and Pershore.
I turned up about 20 minutes before registration
started and we were swamped! It seem the majority of the 190 competitors
decided to turn up that evening and by the time we closed at eight, 130 riders
had signed on.
The snack wagon had pretty much run out of everything except
chips but at least the bar was still open. As I had been booked into a hotel in
Great Malvern, I couldn’t really partake but had a good night chatting, then
headed off to the hotel.
I was up at 07.00 although unfortunately
the hotel didn’t start breakfast until 08.00, I headed to the showground on
deserted roads ready for the day. Thankfully the snack wagon had restocked and
I was able to grab a bacon roll and a cup of tea.
After registering the rest of
the riders and carrying out a briefing the riders set off on their short 106 km
training route, that apart from a short off road section in the showground was
all on tarmac.
The concept of the Wales 500 over those at Kielder and on the
Isle of Man being to make it more suitable for first timers. I left on the bike
before them to ride to my static marshaling point, the idea was that I would
check everyone past then move a short distance up the road to a petrol station where
I’d see the riders pass me again on the return loop. Well that was the plan!
On the way out I’d passed signs saying “Long
Delays” and a diversion. As it was the weekend, I ignored them and sure enough
the roadworks were deserted and the road clear, so I didn’t think there’d be
any issues. Having arrived at my marshaling point, I called back to event HQ only
to discover that several riders had become confused by the diversion and
followed it. Although they eventually got back on route, it was not good as the
concept of the event is to stick as closely to the road book mileage as
possible.
I headed back, “making progress” on the narrow country lanes, which
was fine until I started meeting competitors coming the other way!
Reaching the end of the diversion, I
witnessed a group of riders heading in that way but they had clearly worked out
how to get back on route as they were indicating to turn back onto the correct route.
I rode round the diversion but didn’t see any more riders, getting to the start
I parked up and directed traffic. Certainly a lot of riders were indicating to
follow the diversion until I waved them to continue on route. I made a “modification”
to the sign, Which was fortuitous as I then got a call to say the route was
blocked ahead and a diversion of our own was required.
Again I had to make rapid progress on
narrow roads but at least this time all the bike traffic was headed the same
way. Arriving at the last turning before the closure, I directed all bikes to
carry on as they would rejoin the route a short way ahead were I was assured a
rider had stopped to redirect everyone.
After some time the last three riders on
course arrived (the beauty of everyone being on live GPS trackers) and I led
them off. Unfortunately the rider redirecting everyone had gone and we missed the
turning back onto the route, so took a bit of a detour before catching up again
at my original second marshaling point. After this I was able to tail the
riders back to the finish.
That evening we had the fun job of sorting
the results, as we deemed those who had arrived early and worked out a way
round the road closure to be on the official mileage but also those who had
been redirected would be too despite having done a shorter route. Obviously
anyone deviating from the route elsewhere was penalised for it but we had to
work out a penalty system to account for those riders who had done one of the
two “official distances” so that riders who went wrong elsewhere didn’t appear
above them if they just happened to get the correct distance. The competition
being judged on route keeping accuracy as well as adhering as closely as
possible to the official distance. We had previously discovered that you could
take the wrong route but still get the “right” distance!
To mitigate this we had to visually check
the track of every rider to verify the results from the tracking company but
managed to do so before some excellent food from our evening caterers arrived.
Sadly the bar didn’t fare so well and managed to run out of beer only twenty
minutes later!!!
For some bizarre reason they had not
thought to restock after Friday night. At least there was lots of free wine
offered and when they eventually got some more beer delivered, free beer! This
was good for me as I was leaving the bike at the showground and getting a lift
back to the hotel with John.
After some more good chat and a few beers, we
headed the 10 minutes back to Great Malvern and our beds for the night.
To be continued….
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