Navigator Dual, 21st Century MTBO

News Release / 25.11.2009

Mountain bike orienteering events were a precursor of the adventure race scene and still feature as core AR discipline, whether in point to point or full orienteering form.

Trail Break were one of the pioneers of these events back in the early 90's and have been looking at the format with fresh eyes this year, as one that is ripe for reinvention. The result is Navigator Dual, a two stage event format that manages to be both accessible for beginners and more challenging for veterans at the same time.

More crucially, it puts the lid on the old 'soggy map and compass' image once and for all, by being GPS friendly in every category.

Navigator Dual features 28 checkpoints set out over an approximate 16 x 10km area. You tackle these in two stages over a 3.5 hour time limit; the Fixed Eight section where you have to get to the first 5 checkpoints in order (point to point style), followed by the Open Navigation section where you try to mop up as many of the remaining checkpoints as you can. Each checkpoint scores you points and the most points at the end of the day wins the contest.

To give you plenty of preparation time, the event courses will all be available for download on trailbreak.co.uk two days before the event, in both pdf map and various GPS file formats.

Armed with these, you can do a little pre planning, or just turn up with the markers loaded in your GPS for a hectic day of point-and-shoot riding! It's just the sort of thing that shiny little piece of handlebar electronica was made for!

The Navigator series runs throughout the winter season. Dates and locations are as follows:

6th December: Cranleigh, Surrey
10th January: Shackleford (nr Guildford)
14th February: Woodcote (nr Reading)
(Further dates are still to be set.)

Navigator Dual is navigation reloaded for the 21st Century. The perfect accompaniment to your Adventure Race schedule!

Find out more at trailbreak.co.uk, or call 0118 976 2491 for details.