Tag: La Thuile

Last year La Thuile hosted round 4 of the EWS. It won the race of the year accolade and was raved about by racers and press alike as “real” enduro (eh!?!) with thousands of meters of descent on rough and raw tracks. Val di Sole times a million as Team America might say.

I had a great time last year, but I got smashed. The long harsh trails were a reminder that I’m not too fit and my arms are a bit pathetic. Well not so much a reminder as a mugging down a dingy back alley, but you get the idea.

So, fast forward a year and since the last race at La Thuile, I’ve broken both arms and wrists, spent almost 5 months with an arm in a brace to stop me using it, and a couple weeks ago decided to dislocate my right middle finger to balance up my pre-existing feebleness at holding onto the handlebars.

Seems like a good idea to go back to La Thuile and get some Superenduro action….

Fortunately for those of us making up the numbers, races are a great excuse to catch up with people and win at practice, which is pretty much how the weekend went. Lots of groups of riders from all over the world sitting about in the sunshine and riding some of the best trails on the planet.

The Superenduro crew put on an amazing event, the key things were prioritised: Amazing venue, great trails, well taped, relaxed vibe. The less important things came second. How it should be really.

Only one stage was completely common to the EWS, this year’s first stage which was also last year’s fifth stage. Last year this was my worst stage, the relentless steepness and braking took its toll on my arms and by the end I was having to choose between 3 or 4 finger braking, which didn’t leave many fingers for holding onto the bars. So I was curious how it would go this year, just taking it nice ‘n’ easy and preserving my energy for the lower third. Answer? 30 seconds slower. Bit humiliating that really, though at least I was able use the brakes at the end this time.

The rest of the stages were shorter, but still steep, loose, dusty and fun. I’ve said it plenty times before, but if you own a #enduro bike, go to La Thuile, it is every bit as good as everyone says. Though mibbies a wee bit rougher than it was a few years ago.

Mechanicals did seem to be a bit of an issue. About 350 riders signed on on Saturday morning. By the end of practice 12 had already had to pull out through mechanical or injury, by the end of Sundays racing another 40 were missing from the sheet. Racing the stages, the side of the track was littered with bikes missing a wheel whilst the rider tried to stuff a tube in as quick as possible. At the end of each stage other riders would be trying to fix cooked brakes, blown shocks, buckled wheels or even snapped bars. It’s going to sound like an advert for my Airdrop Edit, but it was pretty amazing to sail through all this without having to touch the bike all weekend other than to put some chain lube on after Saturday practice and tighten a solitary loose spoke after Sundays race. Oh, and stop about 30 seconds into stage 4 to switch the rear shock back from climb to descend mode, but I’m no sure I can blame the bike for that one.

So if I was such an also ran this year, why did I enjoy the racing so much? Usually I put the unrelated rant at the start of the writing then try and claw it back to some sort of bike relevance half way through. This time, it’s going the other way round. If you’re only here for the biking stuff, change the channel now, possibly to see what Ben Winder made of it all.

Dopamine. The neural transmitter that, according to the well known, peer reviewed, journal “The Sun” makes “cupcakes as addictive as cocaine” is responsible for all manner of stuff in the brain, but the best known bit is releasing reward chemicals into the heid and making you feel just smashing thanks.

It might be a surprise to you, but it turns out dopamine is a little more complicated than The Sun makes out. As well as being released following success or something that makes you feel good (say, a really tasty cupcake for example) and making you feel good about yourself, hence wanting to repeat that behaviour (that was a really good cupcake, I shouldn’t, but just one more) it gets released following worrying, scary, near miss events too (holy crap, there’s a tarantula in my cupcake! I wonder if there’s one in the next cupcake?).

Ah yes, racing long and tough courses with minimal practice. I had a clean weekend with no crashes and in control all the time, but you still spend plenty time going “eek” as whole sections of track you’d forgotten about appear, or sections you kinda remembered turned out to have changed somewhat since you rode them a few hundred riders ago. And if you’re really cracking on, you need to take some actual risks and get near your limits. That’s when the near misses (or near hits really) start to rack up and you hit full dopamine house. It’s addictive and you go back for more.

And racing in Italy being especially good? Well, what could possibly trump a cupcake other than good coffee and gelato?

Of course, the brain is way more complicated than that. All manner of other chemicals are complementing and countering the work of dopamine and messing with our emotions. But if you want to know more, perhaps consult some form of expert rather than an unqualified rant on the internet. Seriously, what’s wrong with you people.

*RIP George A Romero.

Amongst the many, many things that annoy me (unnessecary repetition, spelling necessary, etc) is the phrase “have a good time all the time”. The idea that you can have only the good and positive with none of the bad. The yin without the yang, the single market without free movement of people…. Life needs a balance to work.

Hence the crackingness of the La Thuile race weekend; the courses, the weather, the friends, the kicking about in the pits in the sun…. all had to be balanced out by a negative, which in my case was arm pump.

I thought I knew arm pump. Turns out I was wrong. Six stages of average 800m vertical drop of steep and technical terrain showed me what arm pump really was. Fortunately pretty much every racer was getting embarrassed by the leaders of their category (U21 Men being the exception) so I was in good company with my disappointment at stage results.

All pretty much irrelevant anyway as, outside the top 10, no one other than you gives a shit about where you finish, so might as well relax and enjoy the experience. Easier said than done admittedly, but with some grand company from a Canadian infront and a Kiwi behind me on the hill for pre, during and post stage chat, it was still a pretty chilled out affair.

The practice days were probably better than the race days to be honest. The courses were without exception exceptional but better enjoyed in sections with stops to session the more entertaining bits. Practice was in a multi national crew of (probably) Denmark’s fastest enduro racers of the weekend, Nina and Frederik, plus Melanie Pugin who is France’s (probably Europe’s) fasted female enduro racer without a proper deal. Seriously, bike companies, why will none of you support her?

It’s kinda a shame we have to have races to ride like this, it would be good if you could get huge groups of riders together to rag about some trails, share the fastest/funnest lines with each other, then kick about in the sunshine after.

I’m no expert on van life, but the privateer pit area laid on seemed pretty good. Flat car park, fresh running water piped in, toilets, restaurant playing poor quality covers of pop tunes at high volume, views of massive mountain. Not much more to ask.

Well, a van would be good, which fortunately I got upgraded to when photog Tom Gaffney got upgraded from his van to a hotel, and let me use his Transit. Cheers!

There’s more than enough media out there to explain the racing and give a better idea of the trails and I was just taking snaps with the phone all weekend so try these: A proper race report day 1 and 2, Preview of the stages, and the full video thingy.

Rude & Ravanel are making it all a bit boring this year for the who’s gonnay win, but there’s plenty of interest in the rest of the field. Melanie Pugin in 6th for example. Also, I’m not getting the surprise at Sam Hill doing so well. Enduro is all about cutting the inside line, and who’s the king of the inside line?

But (other than my apparent need to keep sticking content up) the main point for the this post is this: Away over to La Thuile for the day to ride your bike. The lift pass is cheap, the trails are incredibly good, well laid out. Even if the EWS tracks aren’t on the bike map yet, the race map is easy to find (see, I just found it for you) and all of it is worth raggin about on.

Cheers to Nina, Frederik, Melanie and Tom for practice day entertainment, shuttle sharing, pit company and for lending me somewhere to sleep, Canyon and SRAM for saving me (or rather the bike) from my mechanical ineptitude and the La Thuile bike park and race crew for putting on such a great event.

*Aye, so turns out Latin is quite hard. I thought this title was just going to be a case of lifting the “Vici” and going on google translate for “vanquished”. Which is “Victus”. Except that means to vanquish, not to be vanquished, which I was, or were, or something. So after a fair bit of research and some help from other non-Latin speakers (cheers Antoine) ended up with “Vini Vidi Victus sum”, or “Wine, I saw I am conquered”. So that got changed to “Veni, Vidi, Victus sum” which doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue and looks a bit odd, so a bit more searching about came up with “Perierat”, or lost, and then some conjugation and stuff later, boom, a blog title.

It’s possible I should put more effort into riding my bike and less into writing about it.

The world series of who’s best at ‘going out and riding their bike about a hill and calling it ENDURO’ has come to La Thuile, which I reckoned was probably the best place I’d been for ‘going out and riding a bike about a hill and calling it ENDURO’ when I first rode there a few years back, so that seems pretty fitting.

As the E.W.S. races are open to everyone I thought it would be good to head through the tunnel and ride against the world’s best. Alas work was less interested in this idea and thought it would be better if I stayed in Chamonix and turned up on the shop floor.

The La Thuile round falls under the organisation of the Italian Superenduro series whose rules allow for 2 days of practice before the race, so instead I went over with Nina (who has no job) to “help” with practice. Which is pretty cool really, its not like you can rock up in Monaco on the GP weekend and take a spin round the track.

The pit set up for the race was huge, not DH world cup level quite yet but the amount of money being poured into enduro racing is considerable. Our pit set up wasn’t quite as impressive.

After a worrying moment at the lift office where they asked for my name to check off on the race list (appointing myself team mechanic surmounted this problem) we headed up to check out the stages.

Stages 3, 5 & 6 all have the same start section, so it made sense to check that out first. The shared section is the trail that I least liked when I rode here before, which is a bit disappointing, but it was more fun than I remember. Fast, rock, some new tech sections at the start. We arrived at the first junction for Nina to get her first flat in 2 years, a rock had sliced the tyre carcass.

Optimistically we thought the sealant had filled the hole, but a bit further down stage 3/5 accepted it hadn’t and put a tube in whilst watching assorted pros barrel past.

For the rest of stage 5 we followed the bike park trail Muret in what turned out to be my favourite stage of the day, mostly as it didn’t involve any pedalling.

Back to the car to stock up on more tubes and we headed down the common trail to the first junction, where Nina had her second flat in 2 years. The rocks up high just seem designed to shred tyres and as we were stopped a steady stream of flat tyres arrived either to be repaired, or ridden on the rim to the mechanic (the bikes hadn’t been marked yet, so you could replace all the broken parts you wanted, or could afford).

Stage 6 this time, which turned out to be pretty physical in the upper sections, not climbing but very flat so very pedally. Lower down it got steeper and techier through the trees and somehow, despite the biblical rain and snow storms this week, we then rode some bone dry loam!

Another trip to the car, this time to put on a spare DH tyre and tube, and back up for the last of the 3 common front face stages. This time, thanks to an extra 1/2 kilo of rotating mass and 35psi, there were no punctures.

Stage 3 links the trails Muret & Garin which are all brilliant bits of riding in their own right, but in linking them there was a nasty sharp climb for a few hundred meters about 3/4’s of the way down the course that was not being appreciated by the racers. Fine if you’ve just turned up to ride though.

Karma almost got me at the end of the trail where I came up short trying to double then triple the 5 pack of jumps on the dual slalom course into the finish paddock and lift line. The fear of going down infront of such a huge crowd was greater than the fear of getting hurt and I managed to suck up the impact and ride out as if I’d meant it like that all along…..

Stage 2 was the only stage of the day not accessed from the lifts. Instead a 600m climb on the opposite side of the valley was needed. With limited time and energy, we skipped it. Instead Nina collared Thomas Lapeyrie as he wandered past our pits and asked him what it was like.

Finally stage 1 & 4, the opening stage for both days, was up. Fred Glo was involved in sorting out the trails for the race, and it wouldn’t be one of his races without some trackless alpine pasture and wide spaced gates. As there isn’t much of that from the top of the lifts, you have to pedal and push for “a cool 40 minutes” (Thomas Lapeyrie), “a hard 1hr 20” (German bloke on a Orange alpine) or a “relaxed 50 minutes” (us) to get to the start on the border between France and Italy.

This stage really showed the difference between something that’s fun to ride, and fun to race. After the open pasture and rock gardens the stage joins “Super Kappa” or “K”, the trail of choice from the last visit. The difference is that the short flat sections you coast along sitting down and chatting are now stood up sprints, and the brief climbs you sat down and span up feel like you’re going to vomit your lungs when racing.

Still, I was here to ride not race so could just enjoy the trail and not worry about it.

I hope the race showcases how incredible the riding is in La Thuile and gets more folk along to pay for lift passes and encourage more trails and more investment. The bike park is so hard to beat for anyone that just wants to have fun thrashing a bike about in the mountains.

As for the race, I predict it will be won by someone with huge levels of fitness, bike handling skills and a solid bike with 2 wheels (that have to be the same size)