Chamonix Bike Blog

Category: Race

Le Thuile: Day of the Dead (forearms).*

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.

17/07/2017
Enduro des Belleville

I’ve been wondering what the point of going racing is recently. It’s great pushing yourself to be faster/higher/stronger/whatever (I think there’s some other big global sporty thing on at the moment) and all, but there’s not that much excitement in the battle for 58th place, I doubt anyone else cares any either. This is probably why I’ve not bothered writing owt about races much this season (I took my start number 256 or last-man-to-start to 58th last week in Samoens, but as mentioned already, it’s just not that interesting)

Fortunately, as in all the best bits of story telling, along comes something to save the day and provide me with a bit of content I want to write about.

Last weekend was the Enduro des Belleville. A wee (weel, 150 odd riders, no that wee) enduro race near Les Menuires over in the Savoie, run in the most relaxed manner possible and with 4 close to perfect stages. Throw in a Saturday night downhill street race, local friends to put you up in (unfinished) luxury chalets, beer at the feed stations and blue skies from start to finish: you’ve got a winner.

Even breaking the car on Saturday morning and making Nina detour a couple hours worth of driving to pick me up didn’t kill off my enthusiasm.

Saturday passed in a series of mishaps that for most races would have me far grumpier than even my standard background level of mild irritation at the world. From my car putting us a couple hours late getting to Les Menuires, then finding we actually wanted to go to Saint Martin des Belleville (I’ll read the full text of where sign-in is next time….), to heading up the hill to meet Sam for practice…..and going the wrong way so we ended up in Les Menuires. Again (though this did allow for a no-pedal drag race and a flashing “trop vite” warning sign on the road back).

Fortunately Flo Arthus was about to show us stage 4 (and how to get to stage 4, probably our bigger issue) which was good, as stage 4 was pretty sweet and getting to follow a shit hot local like Flo down it is even betterer.

It looked like we were going to be too late for the 2nd chair up to stage 3 (how could that be possible, everything had run so well till now) but a couple minutes late is the new just in time, so we got to play on that too, another great trail, maybe my favourite of the weekend.

Some more general faff later it was time for the street race. One lap to have a look-see then one lap with the clock running down through St Martin des Belleville, where it seemed like every inhabitant had turned out to heckle. The general Saturday theme continued with arriving at the start line to find I’d brought 2x left gloves and Nina’d forgotten her go-pro. With no UCI officials in sight I rode gloveless and Nina had to rally back to the chalet in the couple of minutes between runs.

After surviving a little over 70 seconds of concrete edges I was a bit surprised to hear “second place” at the finish. And more surprised as no one seemed to go any faster…..until newly met English rider Rob Newman arrived 0.23sec faster than me, followed by Julien Roissad 0.12 sec faster than that.

I’m not bitter at all about missing my first podium in a couple year and definitely don’t think world cup podiums of 5 should be introduced. Here’s Antonin Gourgin’s head cam showing what 0.26sec slower than me and last step on that WC podium looks like. Congratulations to Emmanuel Allaz for taking the win, and Nina for adding to her champagne collection with the win for the ladies.

And then there was food and beer. You never got that in my DH days. Well, not included in the entry fee anyways.

The race: Thanks to Sam, I’d been given a start number of 16, and even better I had Sam infront of me so, combined with the 30 sec intervals between riders, I would have to be motoring 1 minute quicker than a quick rider to have to worry about passing anyone. Just as well given the dust.

The first two stages were completely blind for me and anyone not local. It’s been a whiles since I got to ride walking trails (these stages are normally interdite fae the VTT, yet another cheers to the organisers for getting them for the race) blind and flat out. It’s one of the most entertaining things in my life to ride just on wits and intuition that there will be a landing behind that rock, or that the corner is going to open up instead of cliff out. Perhaps that should be most terrifying now I think about it.

Even better the taping was deliberately vague in places. I know #endurolines are a sore topic but sometimes it’s just cool as to take a guess on what’s about to happen and batter across some open ground to giggles or screams, depending on how it all works out.

The final 2 stages kept the same theme, albeit with a little more idea what was coming up. Even a return to yesterday’s levels of competence where I broke my shifter on the first real corner of stage 3 didn’t really ruin the fun. If anything not changing gear was one less thing to worry about.

Racing over, the A4 print out put me 10th senior men, with my 30 second target Sam (watching him stand and sprint up climbs into the distance was just a bit demoralizing on the final stage) in 6th. So neither of us would have made it on a WC podium. Here’s some proper race reporting and the event video to give you a better idea.

Racing to get into the top ten is much more fun than the top 100, but better still is when you get handed beer at the finish line by the race organisers, the restaurant next to the finish line is providing food, you’ve gone through the day knowing that arriving late to the start isn’t really a great issue, when the craic sitting about in the sun at the start of each stage for is one of the best parts of the day.

So it seems that’s what the point of racing is for me at the moment. Getting to go somewhere I probably wouldn’t have gone, see new mountains, ride new trails, meet new people and enjoy it all with friends. Maybe I’ll get competitive again next month.

Huge thanks for everyone involved in organising the weekend, Flo for showing us the trails and putting up with Scottish, Nina for saving me from a very long cycle to the race and usual high standards of conversation and Sam for putting us up and doing plenty to make a good weekend even better. And everyone else I met too.

16/08/2016
La Thuile EWS, Veni Vidi Perdidi*

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.

21/07/2016
Crankworx Les Gets

Way back in the dim and distant mists of time, when a DH bike had 6″ of travel, 150mm disk brakes, a 69 degree head angle and Steve Peat was only in his mid to late 20’s, I raced downhill.

Back then nobody trained (or at least, nobody admitted it, turns out quite a few were cheating with a road bike), if you were lucky you had a couple of spare tires, but certainly not any spare wheels and, in Scotland at least, you were racing on some of the best DH tracks ever made. Raw, loose and fast.

Then I got the chance to race in the British national series. The tracks were shit, if you didn’t have a wheen of money to bring spare parts you didn’t have a hope, people were taking it seriously. I wasn’t having fun so sold my DH bike and just rode street and trials.
Jump forward a few years. An enduro/trail bike has 6″ or more of travel, 203mm disk brakes, 66 degree head angle and Steve Peat is still racing world cups. I guess I should race downhill again.

I’ve ridden plenty of world cup and iXS level DH tracks over the last few years. Some I’ve thought were amazing (hello Pila) some I’ve been less impressed with (looking at you Val d’Isere) some of my favourites don’t feature on any calendars (Vallorcine, really, in it’s prime that was such a grand course) and as a rule I prefer as little building work as possible. Partly because I seem to be better at riding natural terrain, mostly because big jumps scare the crap out of me.

Hence, it was with just a wee amount of trepidation I signed up for the Crankworx DH in Les Gets, I mean, it’s kinda known for being a jump, berm, jump, berm, jump style bike park.

Shouldn’t have worried.

I’ll rephrase that. I shouldn’t have worried about it being a bike park course. Turned out there were plenty other things to worry about. The track still had a few big ol’ jumps, fortunately 6 chicken lines had been built for chickens like me. But the rest of the course was wide taped, fast, loose and raw.

Having missed track walk, I rolled in off the start ramp built over the Grand Ourse restaurant terrace with little idea what was to come, but battered off down the track with the intention of having a fun fast lap to see where the ground went.

After skipping round the initial road gap you held on and hoped for the best as you bounced over the as yet un-worn open hillside. Using the natural shape of the hill to help you gain and lose speed without the need for pedalling, the course kept rhythm until dropping, literally, into the woods.

Again, the track was barely ridden in with just some catch berms and small jumps added to keep things flowing, and some great steep inside lines though the still present and only slightly damp loam. Joining the original 2004 world champs course canyon section the speed picked up even more as you rattled through the massive berms, over a drop and then launched out into the open.

From here the course returned to the football pitch wide taping higher up, but with some small stream gap jumps even I could hit blind on the first lap. What I couldn’t hit first lap was the wooden road gap/drop that ended up claiming so many elite riders race runs by Sunday or the natural cliff drop into the finish arena, but that’s what chicken lines are for.

I was feeling pretty happy about things coming into the end of the first practice session, I’d still not hit the first big jump (It was closed for most of my laps whilst the initial guinea pigs were scraped up off the landing, hopefully no one got hurt) but even with the track rapidly cutting up it was still fun riding.

The fun came to an abrupt end as I ran out of ability towards the end of the woods and landed on, as a friend once explained to an exasperated head teacher following a primary school fight, “a delicate area of the male anatomy” before seeing my bike launch over my head. Freed of it’s pilot it tried to prove that modern trail bikes are faster than their owners can ride them and shot off down the trail at a good pace. This didn’t last long and the bike then also crashed, ripping the hose out of the front brake in a spray of mineral oil.

Practice over for the day, bike and rider limp off to get fixed. It rains overnight.

Saturday wasn’t quite as wet as Friday, which initially seemed like a good thing. The slopestyle comp might actually happen and the track might dry out for seeding.

The slopestyle didn’t happen, and whilst the track did dry out for seeding, it transformed into an unrideable gloop. Turns out #enduro bikes don’t have the same tyre clearance as a DH bike. The mud was so thick the wheels hardly turned and I was pedalling hard down some fairly steep slopes just to keep moving. Once in the lower open slopes even that wasn’t happening and the wheels just refused to budge. I couldn’t even push the bike, so I tried to pick it up and run down, but it weighed too much for my feeble ski bum arms to lift, so I left the track, dug all the mud out, went for a spin up and down the road for a bit to clear the wheels, then eventually finished my inglorious lap.

I wasn’t the only person suffering, anyone with poor mud clearance or just a bit scrawny was having a poor time of it on Saturday. It’s rare that there’s one “best” bike for a track, but if you owned an Orange 324, Manitou Shiver forks, 26″ wheels and a pair of the original Michelin DH Mud tyres you were sorted.

Not often you’ll hear that….

The mud raised the most frustrating thing about the weekend for me and many other riders. If you had the skill and balls to keep it lit for an entire lap then you were going to get a great time. Unfortunately as soon as you slowed down, the mud had a chance to build up on the bike and the tyres, making the bike heavier and slowing it down. As soon as this happened, you get more mud build up and….. You get the idea.

As a result a slip off line, a near stall, was enough to end your run. And if you crashed, then you were going to crash a few more times as a result. Once the mud was blocking up the frame and forks, it had the effect of dragging your brakes constantly, and what’s the main thing you shouldn’t do in slippy condition. Exactly.

So, when you watch the videos of races in stupidly muddy condition or see the massive spread of times in the result sheets, don’t just assume that the riders canny ride in the mud. There were a lot of folk looking very average on a bike when if you could just have magic’d away 20kg of mud and let their wheels turn, well, they’d be much happier.

Crankworx is about more than the racing mind, so Saturday did also involve wandering about Les Gets, bumping into friends, drinking beer, watching the pump track challenge, questioning just why people still take chainsaws to bike races, drinking beer and generally not getting cold wet and muddy for a while.

Sunday morning brought us back to the cold wet and muddy game. Torrential rain overnight had removed almost all the traction there was on the course, but more importantly for me had thinned out the mud nicely from crunchy peanut butter to a good seafood chowder. I was also now riding with Sam who was definitely more up to speed than me.

I might not have been having the best of times all weekend on the course, but ragging down the upper sections of the track, holding my poor battered bike wide open as I tried to keep sight of Sam on his beast of a Orange 324 (Fox 40’s not Shivers) was ace. If terrifying. Even the lower sections were more fun again now the gloop could be blasted though without bringing you to a complete halt.

The race run didn’t go quite as well. The upper section was super grippy and riding as well as it had at any point of the weekend, but from there down the track had headed back to heavy gloop. Somewhere in the woods my chain fell off, I considered putting it back on, but I couldn’t find the cranks under the mud, so gave up on that and scooted off down the track, having to push and carry the bike through far too many sections to mention.

An hour later and I was feeling fairly smug, stomping about the course in my winter boots whilst others fell about in skate shoes, and watching the top elites deal with the conditions. There’s not many sports where you can as directly compare your abilities to the best of the world, they’re coming down the same course as you, their bikes are better but not that much better. Aye, you’ll be found wanting for the skills, but far too many folks get away with thinking their mediocrity makes them special in some way so it’s good to be firmly put back in your place. It was interesting how much some were struggling, not due to a lack of ability, just due to a combination of their sponsors bike not having mud tyre clearance and an error at some point dragging them down.

Les Gets has a 3 year contract for the Crankworx, here’s hoping we can hit the trail in the dry in 2017. And does anyone want to sell me a cheap DH bike?

23/06/2016
Four have fun in Finale

It’s de rigueur to make some sort of “season finale” style pun in reports on the Finale EWS round, what with it being the season final in Finale and all. Instead I thought I’d go with a nod to insufferable English kids books of the ’50s.

A reference that it seems will be lost on many of you as Google analytics tells me more than 50% of readers are “not UK” so you probably didn’t suffer Enid Blyton at school. I also wonder why quite so many folk are interested in this crap, you can’t all be robots (01001000 01100001 01101001 01101100 00100000 01110010 01101111 01100010 01101111 01110100 00100000 01101111 01110110 01100101 01110010 01101100 01101111 01110010 01100100. Yeah, I still rock that engineering degree. A prize of the only joke about binary if you work it out, thus also ticking my box of “try to engage with your readers” and “encourage feedback” which apparently all good bloggers should do).

Obviously, we were down to race, which is a serious business and not fun at all, but before that there was some riding, and some pizza, and some swimming in the sea, and some coffee, quite a bit of coffee actually, and practice.

Only practice didn’t quite go to plan as no one remembered to order good weather for the full week, and with promises of 120kph winds and biblical rains on Friday the EWS instead chose to let everyone practice all 6 stages on Thursday only and close the trails on Friday, so all you had to do was ride the full 106km and 4300m of climbing of the course, and session the technical trails, and remember it all.

This obviously wasn’t going to happen until Spencer gave up his chance to ride for the day and instead racked up some 140km of driving the other 3 of us about the tiny coastal roads, all the while battling the other 400 or so riders trying to do the same.

Yay for enduro’s environmental credentials.

We did get pretty slick at putting 3 bikes onto the back and roof of the car though.

The trails were a mixed bag and the general chat about town was that they could have been better. S1 was the rider favourite. S2 was the fit rider favourite. S3 and S4 were fun, but scaring the pro’s ‘cos they have to actually go fast on them. S5 the looong one, but pretty good trails and S6 was just a bit dull. Nobody said they liked it, a shame to end the season on it really.

After a day of twiddling thumb’s watching the wind, drinking coffee, watching the SRAM crew get more and more pissed off with the entire field trying to get their bikes fixed for free, and checking out the head cam footage, we could go for the race briefing.

Due to the bad weather forecast for Saturday, racers favourite S1 would be cancelled. This got a boo from the crowd, much to Enrico’s disappointment. After the events of Colorado and Spain then it’s only fair the organisers were playing it safe, and the tragic events just a short distance up the coast in Nice showed how serious Saturday could have been. It was still a blow to spirits but.

Bof, same for everyone, on to Saturday.

Go liaise. Then race. Then get the excuses ready.

S1 Ok, then lost chain, S2 Good, then crash, S3 Didn’t really commit, S4 Really good, then started to get tired, then make mistakes, then bigger mistakes, then crashed. S5 Err, actually can’t find an excuse for this one, I’m just not fit enough.

Still, it all went better for me than for Sandy who made it about 200m into S1 before the slick ground took him down breaking his bike and forcing him to retire.

Nina was fast when the trails pointed down, but they didn’t always point down this year. She still finished higher in category than the rest of us despite having avoided pedalling uphill for the entire summer.

So why race if that all sounds so meh? Because every race I still get at least one stage where everything starts to click, nothing else exists and the world is solely about you going as fast as you can. If you’ve never felt it, it’s as free as you can get from the worries around you, addictive and beautiful and pointless.

Sometimes there’s a calm measured voice in the back of you your head softly saying “brake early, exit fast”, “rotate the hips”, “look through the corner”, “drop the heels”. gently guiding you down the trail in a fast efficient manner.

That was the first 6 minutes or so of S4 on Sunday morning.

Then, drowning out that voice is “CORNERARRRGE-BRAAAAAAKE-PEDALLLLLLLLLLLFULLLLLLLLGAZZZZZZZZ-CANT BREATHARGROCCCK-WHATTHEFFUANOTHER CORNERRRRDRROOOOOOPPPCORNERNAILEDIT-EEK”

This voice is not efficient or fast, but it’s shit loads more fun to deal with. That was the next 5 minutes of S4.

Then, inevitably, there’s “Oh god my arms, I can’t feel my arms. Am I pulling the brakes? The fingers don’t seem to be working either. Wait, is that tape ahead, there’s spectator cheers, should I be turning left or right? Is it me or is the ground getting a lot closer? Bugger. Ow. Should my leg be through the bike like that?”

That was the final 2mins 41seconds of S4.

Nico Voullioz arrived at the finish 2mins 1second earlier, thus saving these issues for the liaison where it doesn’t seem to matter so much, the cunningness of a champion.

Anyway. My arse was kicked and I coasted home tail between legs in 121st and 16% off the pace but still hungry to get better. And eat. And drink beer with the the folk you meet on the liaisons and were so good at getting out my way on the stage (28 passes in the weekend I think) And go for a swim in the sea (more successful for some folk that others…..)

Ciao* Finale.

*That’s also de rigure b.t.w., to finish the report with ‘ciao’ instead of something in english.

06/10/2015