Chamonix Bike Blog

Tag: enduro

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
Finale Ligure is waiting for you

“Finale Ligure is waiting for you” reads the tagline on the trail map. Which does kinda imply the next sentences are “Outside the school gates 4 o’clock. Finale’s gonnay pure batter you.” showing the problem of speaking second languages and context (ever flown from Prestwick airport).

Once again the original purpose of this blog, to give mtb trail information for Chamonix, is getting ignored and we’re off on holiday to Finale Ligure where there’s plenty of sunshine, absolutely no snow and it’s not Chamonix.

We weren’t the only ones, ascension weekend holiday meant a 90mins queue to get through the mont blanc tunnel and enough familiar faces from here, there, that chamonixbikeblog maybe is a valid title still.

It also meant that our plan A of getting some uplift in was scuppered by several thousand teutonic bergfahradders (languages have never been a strong point of mine but I hide it well) getting there first. Fortunately the friendly folks at Evolve managed to squeeze us into a van up to Din, meaning we only had to do about 2500m of climbing on tarmac roads over the 3 days riding.

$Quintessential Finale trails. i.e. fractionally tighter than you'd like and peppered with mech destroying rocks.$

Accommodation was in short supply too, however we’d been offered space in an apartment rented by several ex Chamonix Irish lads. Accommodation is always a bit of a lucky dip down in Finale. Airbnb has all sorts of weird and wonderful choices but you never really know what you’re going to get until you walk through the close door.

Andy certainly lucked out on this one. Walking though the close door, a massive green barn gate just 50m from the main square, the hallway stretched out infront and past the series of marble busts into a never ending staircase lit from the side like all the best mafia films. Efficient use of space never gets priority when you’ve briefed the architect for full ostentatious, so the theme of big rooms continued all the way through. The apartment might have been for nine in Finale, but drop that place in ChamSud and you could rent it to a couple dozen Swedish ski bums nae bother.

Finding the best trails in Finale is easy. Ride up to the top of a hill, look for a trail dropping into the woods, follow it and you’ve just found the best trail.

Of course, it might not be the best trail for you, but someone out there will like it.

With only one lift up a hill available for us, we were pedalling up the tarmac a lot, and when it’s your own power getting you up the hill you generally want the trail down to be best for you. Trying some of Spence and my favourites from trips past didn’t completely work as trails like DH Donne and San Michele have a had a fair old kicking over the last couple years and now have more resemblance to a gravel quarry than the tracks they once were.

Still better than most mind.

The other issue was the ever so slightly unreliable nature of my memory as once you’ve been to a few thousand trail heads they all kinda, sorta, look a bit the same. So we didn’t always hit the trail we were aiming for but it didn’t matter as frequently what we ended up on turned out to be better anyway.

As good as riding trails you love again and again is, I can’t get enough of finding a new favourite trail and fleeing down it for the first time not knowing what it’s got for you next. The highlight of the trip was getting in the Evolve shuttle bus on Saturday morning with a group of German and Swiss riders, getting asked “NATO or Din?” and them saying Din. So we went to Din and worked it out.

This wasn’t as blind as it sounds, Andy had ridden up near Din before and raved about the trail Isallo Extasy, so we pedalled about for a while until we found the spot and dropped in. The trail had been destroyed by forestry work about a year ago, but one inspired local had spent 8 months refurbishing and perfecting the trail. There probably is a better way to descend 800m, but I’m struggling to think of a more complete trail.

The rest of the ride back to Finale didn’t drop the quality either. A 330m climb up the road from Magliolo was going to drop us into the cancelled stage 1 from the 2015 EWS, the (THE) trail of the race and almost everyone’s favourite from practice. Alas I got a bit lost at the trail head but what we ended up on, Kill Bill I think, was every bit as good. Possibly better for me as I had no idea where I was going.

A quick stop for coffee in Calice Ligure and another 300m tarmac climb got us to one of the 2014 EWS highlights, Neandertal. Fortunately Spence had ridden here before so we managed to ride the right way down a trail just as good as we remembered (though not before I clocked another trail I could get lost on…) followed by a happy cruise down the road to the coast and gelato.

Gelato, coffee, pizza, aperitivo. would Finale be what it is without these things? The main square was almost as busy as race weekends with bikers “rehydrating”.

The last trail of a trip is a tricky one, it’s going to be the last memory of the holiday so it better be good….do you finish on a well kent classic or take a gamble on something new? We gambled and for the last bit of pedalling headed back up to the Rocca Carpanca to try the Pino Morto trail I’d spotted the day before.

It took about 25m to know we’d made the right choice. It’s not the best trail ever, but for simple dumb enjoyment it’s hard to beat. Fast and loose with catch berms and little kickers in all the right places to keep speeds high, you just kept dropping and rolling through rock gardens, bobsleigh sections and whoops. Whoever built it found the perfect formula to make you feel like a way better rider than you are. Three well excited kids skidded out the end of the trail into the dust, the right way to end the trip.

Turns out we only got the slightest kicking fae Finale, which is good. The bikes got rather more with some impressive creaks coming from all manner of parts by the end, but still, no crashes and only 1 puncture between us would suggest Finale would never be much good at being school bully.

A load of shout outs here for the trip, to the assorted German, Swiss and Austrian riders we bumped into who seemed more happy and excited to be where they were than I thought possible and also had the organisational skills to bring GPS units to direct a bunch of Scots who were navigating by guesswork, to the folks at Evolve bike shop for sorting out a shuttle when it shouldn’t really have been happening for us but most of all to Andy and the lads for inviting us down to piggy back on their holiday and let us stay in their apartment, hope the rest of your trip was a grand as the start.

09/05/2016
Hallowed ground

Every game has its Mecca. A site that unless you visit you can’t call your self a true believer. For Elvis fans it’s Graceland, gamblers have Las Vegas, alpinists Chamonix, Muslims err Mecca. For #enduroist (or mountain bikers as we were known before the number symbol was misappropriated) it’s Finale

And just like Mecca at hajj, mountain bikers must go Finale for the superenduro/EWS finals.

So we did. And lo, it was good.

The reason to head at EWS finals time (apart from Nina racing in it) is that a bunch of new trails get made and marked out for you, which you can go and session whilst watching the chosen ones of mountain biking doing the same.

During the official 2 days practice we had the chance to show Greg Minnar and Steve Peat how not to take loose corners, Rene Wildhaber and T-Mo how not to choose a line and watch the Ravanels and Nico Quere show us how not to rail a loamy rut….

It’s particularly useful that the trails are marked out as the official map and guidebook to the area is a bit vague and open to interpretation, leading to disagreement as to what path to follow (seriously, some of these analogies just write themselves). We ended up relying on a combination of the last 3 years worth of race cards, following our noses and, when all else failed, asking people.

This was quite a good technique as not only were there about 500 riders signed up to race, but there were about the same number doing what we were, and at least 1% knew where they were going.

For the first time the race left the hills directly above the beach and headed for the hills and the infamous Nato base freeride trails, so obviously we had to head up there too. The trails are different in nature to those lower down which make extensive use of Roman (or older) paths. Up high the trail builders have been free to do what they want, so nature’s been given a helping hand. A big helping hand.

To get up to the Nato base on race day you were faced with a 20km, 1000+m climb on road. Before the race most folks were shuttling this, unfortunately for us we hadn’t looked at the contour lines and figured it couldn’t be that far up, so we pedalled too. We quickly wised up and spent the next day in and out of cars and joining the traffic. Shuttling is all part of the Finale experience it seems. Part of me was disappointed in messing up the environment for everyone in pursuit of instant(ish) gratification, but then the trails are rreeaallyy good. And I can always do penance in the next life.

Trail building also seems a much bigger part of Finale bike culture than we’re used to in Chamonix, with folk out doing maintenance in the rain just days after the racing. We even bumped into the builder of the epic(ly long) final stage who then berated us all for not trying the hidden northshore road gap after a 45km 1000m+ day.

The 1000m of vertical down to the Med’ shouldn’t have felt too bad to us, it’s only a little more than a lap off Brevent after all, but there’s something about the Finale trails that make you feel like you get way more down for your up. It might be the sustained technical nature, or maybe the lack of fireroad or tarmac linking descents you get in most places, or maybe it’s just some higher power playing with physics.

Heaven, nirvana, paradise? I’m pretty sure Finale features there somewhere.

10/10/2014
Coupe du France Enduro series round 5, Valberg

There’s been a lot of race writeups on here recently, and I will get back to proper riding for the next post, but there was one last race in the Coupe du France so for one last time the Kangoo was laden with bikes and tyres. One last time we headed out through the Gorge du Arly. One last time we drove south with no air-con and one working window. One last time you get the idea.

This last one was Valberg/Guillaumes, star of online hits like Fabien Barel’s this, Yo Barelli’s that and Nico Quere’s other. All of these videos feature sections of the race track, and none of them do it justice.

In the first break from tradition, a clue that this wasn’t going to be a normal race, 2 of the 8 stages went online on the Monday before the race with the instructions that they were now taped and open for practice. At first this seemed very anti the “spirit of enduro” as it would give an advantage to the locals, but it turned out that as the stages had been used for 10 years, it was to try and even the field for anyone that hadn’t raced them before. And could turn up on a school day to practice. Not sure if it worked or not, locals always have an advantage whether they know the exact trails or not, but I think I’d prefer if we just had to ride blind(ish)

Saying that, shuttling the tracks on the Friday was pure dead brilliant. Though the flip side was that shuttling up the side of a mountain gets through a small petrol tank quickly. At 1.70 euros a litre in the village garage, the entertaining roads had an obvious cost.

After a lap of stage 2 & 3 for me & Nina, and an extra lap of 3 for Nina with Spence, we drank more petrol for the 25 minute drive up the road to the sign in and the next surprise. Instead of the fastest starting first, they’d be starting last. So rather than the usual 0600 alarm for an 8am start, I wasn’t rolling into the liaison until 1030. Which was the next thing. The 1st liaison started about 650m above the finish line, so you pretty much had to have a car to get there. Unless you were one of the 2 Italian lads who misunderstood and rode up to the start….

Which neatly brings us to describing the stages.

Saturday. 1850m of height gain, 2400m of descending and 45km of riding over and between 5 stages. If somehow you’re saying “aye great, but I NEED more video links” then the event video here will give a better idea.

Stage 1. After a pretty easy 30 minute liaison the opening stage was a short sprint into the trees and then lots and lots of dry, dusty, loamy singletrack. Sometimes freshly cut, sometimes fairly well established and mostly downhill, for a long long time until suddenly there was a flat pedally bit with a few short sharp climbs that I needed to push. After the timing gate you were along the road to the food tent and a 1hr window for….

Stage 2 which began after a 310m climb in the saddle. This stage is now 10 years old, but ain’t showing it at all. Mostly on the signature grey shale rock of the region with sculpted features blended into natural terrain. The only way I could describe it is like the Rampage course for punters. So much fun to ride, and only slightly terrifying to race.

Stage 3 was the same but bigger, with the liaison going past Stage 2 and up a total of 390m. Beginning with a 10m tarmac sprint, a 90 degree right into a steep bank and another 90 degree right, then wooded singletrack, a few pedals, lots of the grey dirt spines, then some super loose and dusty singletrack in the trees to finish. Again, just amazing to ride. The racing? More later (oooh, suspense eh?)

Stage 4 was preceded by its liaison. The previous 3 pedals up had lulled us into a false sense of security. Leaving the feedstation the 2hr 10mins allocated for the 655m height gain looked ok, until 10 minutes in when you pulled off the tarmac and started pushing up a trail. And kept pushing. All the way. Still, the stage was another blinder. Longest of the weekend at over 760m of drop and featuring all that is good about woodland singletrack.

Finally Stage 5 only needed you to drag your body and bike up 50metres to the start above the town of Guillaumes. 100m of yet more steep dusty singletrack spat you out at the top of the town where you raced through narrow alleyways, stairs, wall drops, tunnels and car ramp stepups to the town centre. Like pretending to be in the Italian Job, but on bikes. In France. With no gold.

Home, eat, drink, sleep, reset.

Sunday stage 1. Only 280m of up for the honour of the worst stage of the weekend. Open alpages with slightly damp grass and rocks poised ready to destroy a rim or tyre or disk or dérailleur and your chances.

Stage 2. Had a chairlift! And then a surprisingly tight 120m climbing liaison which saw plenty folk arriving breathless and/or late for their start. Just as well they were warmed up as after a series of flowless freshcut corners through the trees you had 1/2 a km of flat or uphill fireroad. Better singletrack was followed by another hard pedal and then the final steep section to the finish next to the chairlift.

Handy that, as you were back up it for stage 3. Fortunately the liaison was then 100% downhill to stage 3’s halfway height where you were telt you had an obligatory reccy descent of the lower part of the stage, before getting the pleasure of an obligatory push all the way back up to the start. This stage was a bit different (again, building suspense with a tease and promise of a big reveal, just to keep you reading) wide lines at the top, a short pedal, some unavoidable (tiny) gap jumps then multiple taped lines where you had to pick a route and stick to it for a while, then old school grass dual slalom stylee to the finish arch.

Whit a series of tracks, yet what of the alluded to surprises?

Surprise 3. Arriving at the start line of stage 1 I discover that rather than the usual 10 second gaps, we get 1 minute. But start is groups of 3. Yes, down super narrow consequence laden trails we were going to be racing 3 up, elbow to elbow, mano a mano (err, a mano).

I got lucky. 1 of my fellow gladiators didn’t show and the other, Phillipe Widmer, had been an overtaking target of mine for the last few Saturdays, so we were already on familiar terms. Out the gate I had the legs for the holeshot and gained a lead through the initial techy corners. The terrain just kept getting more and more fun to ride and I was having a ball when I started to hear heavy breathing. That wasn’t mine.

“Allez, ALLEZ!”. I’d kinda forgotten it was a race and Phillipe was back on me. Best start pedalling again. The rest of stage passed in a blur of good line choices and that amazing feeling of being in the bubble where everything seems easy and fun. Until I hit the pedally section low down at least, but I’d built up more than enough lead by then.

Stage 2 was similar. Got the holeshot, almost got overtaken on the 1st pedally bit, pulled away in the technical sections. But I just couldn’t shake Phillipe who pushed all the way to the line.

Stage 3 I was starting on the outside. The opening 100m which would have been easy as a individual were going to be interesting as 2. For 3 the starts were turning out in turns comical and painful. Phillipe got the holeshot, I got to the base of the slope first, we collided, laughed, and he was in the lead. Then the physical section saw him ramp up the gap. To cap it off I then made a daft mistake and crashed. Normally I’d have cruised down the rest of the stage, but having a distant speck churning up dust fired something inside me. I think it was competitiveness. Either way, I started pedalling, pushing on in the corners, the speck was getting bigger. The speck was getting closer. Dropping into the final tight and steep trees I was back on his tail and this time I was shouting “allez, ALLEZ”. Phillip overcooked a 180 degree hairpin and went down, 3 out of 3 stages.

By Stage 4 we had our mutual good luck start routines down. I didn’t have Phillipes power endurance, but at least I could outsprint him for the 40m it needed to get into the first rock garden in the lead and I pulled away from there. The first 1/2 of the stage felt like stage 1 had. In the zone and riding easily. The air was getting dustier and I was starting to catch the group 1 minute infront but then the days riding started to catch me. Everything was getting tired and I couldn’t hit the lines I wanted anymore. My legs would seize with cramp if I stood up to pedal and I felt like the bike weighed as much as I did. Still, 4 out of 4.

Finally stage 5 and we were getting to start 1 at a time. I celebrated by riding straight into a tree about 5 seconds out of the start gate. After untangling myself from the bike I fired on down with squint bars, which at least gave me slight x-up style points on every air. This stage was just what an urban DH should be like, I just wish I could have ridden it without squiff bars!

Enduro racing is a lot of different things to a lot of different people, but for me, this day was what I was looking for in all the races I entered. A long hard day on the bike with some of the best trails you’ll ride, a huge variety of terrain and happy people to share it with. I just wish we could have raced it all 1 at a time.

With the racing done and dusty, we headed off to eat, get ready for day 2, and find out what was happening in the morning. This proved harder than anticipated, but instead we got to watch the kids get their prizes from Fabien Barel & Nico Vouilloz. If you’re wondering why the French dominate enduro, then this is why. For the last 10 years in the Mercantour, kids as young as 8 have been racing on the same stages, with the same liaisons, as the adults, they just do less of the stages over the day. Then getting guidance from the worlds best. Same recipe as British DH I guess…..

Surprise 4. With no information to go on, we’d guessed that the start times would be the same order as Saturday. Yes and no, I went off as expected, but the girls were now in the general classification, so Nina’s start was with the mid pack riders and about 15 minutes before we even turned up! She managed to sprint up the liaison and just made her start.

The pace notes for Stage 6 mentioned that you could puncture easily. Before my start I got a text to say Nina had managed to puncture. Twice. Fortunately we were back to individual starts so I took it easy passing many others at the side of the trail who hadn’t.

Stage 7 didn’t have rocks at least, just lots of pedalling and loose branches, one of which decided to get stuck in my cassette and dérailleur. More time lost.

Stage 8, surprise 5. The startline was taped out like the mega-avalanche. Riders were going to start as per their current classification for the weekend. If you want to move up the ranking, you have to overtake! Francois Bailly-Maitre went out the gates, then at the appropriate gap for your time so far, so did the next rider, and the next. Suddenly the wider taping at the top of the course and multiple line choices lower down made sense! I managed to get the rider infront of me, but that was it, I’m not sure I’m cut out for the Mega.

And with that, the Coupe du France was over for the season.

Surprise number 6. I finished the weekend 8th. In category…. After a season of being in the same category as all the top guys (and in fact every guy from 19 to 39) they ran a Masters 1 category for almost-but-not-quite over the hill club of 30 to 39.

Nina might not have done so well here between the hard liaisons and double puncture, but she did well enough and got the 3rd step on the podium for the season title. An incredible result for her first season racing, and she only started biking 3 years ago!

Perhaps the best part of the prize giving though was seeing the 1st placed junior Sebastien Claquin hand his prize of a years factory deal with Giant to 2nd placed Valentin Escriou. Though as Claquin also finished 5th overall in mens, I guess he had his factory deal signed already.

One last time we packed up the car, got ready for the drive, complained about our aches and pains and headed back north.

One time more I’ll thank everyone who organised the series, the 130 volunteers involved in this round, the team that chose Saturdays stages (why is the EWS is going to Samoens when it could come here?), all the racers who made me feel so welcome over the season despite the occasional language difficulties, Nina for being a great race buddy, and Spencer for the driving, cooking, organising, mechanicing, taking photos and lending me numerous parts of his bike, all when he could have been getting riding in for himself.

Next season?

10/09/2014
Coupe du France Enduro series round 4, Samoens

There are 3 certainties in life; death, taxes and the Samoens round of the Coupe du France being muddy.

But to be honest, on Friday afternoon as the car was getting packed for the short drive over to register and deal with scrutineering, I wasn’t so sure. And a quick track walk to see what the trail conditions were didn’t have me convinced I was going to need my newly purchased second hand wetscreams.

Then it started raining, then pissing it down, then the warm up act ended and the real storm arrived. The certainty memes were safe, it was going to be a wet race.

Samoens is part of the Grand Massif lift network and gives an interesting change from Chamonix’s mostly steep and rocky trails without the crowds of Morzine. Of course, steep and rocky trails generally drain and dry quickly after rain. Mellower angled loam under trees doesn’t and with there being something in the order of 250% of average rainfall this summer there’s not been much in the way of dust recently.

Possibly helped by the announcement Samoens will host a round of the EWS next year there were more French pros and international riders than usual, including the Irish/Scottish combo of Greg Callaghan and Katy Winton, which was great as my French sucks so I could have slightly more in depth conversations between stages than;
“It’s muddy”,
“Yes, it’s muddy, but I’m Scottish, I like muddy”,
“I’m from the south of France, I hate muddy”,
“Ah.”

Anyways, the stages were a little complicated to follow from the map, with 11 stages between the 2 days, but only 6 traces. As ever the event video helps, but they worked out something like….

Saturday
Stage 1 & 3. Starting outside the main Samoens lift, fast but a little peddaly grass into the trees for lots of fresh cut loamy trail and the odd bit of built up bermed track, a wee blast down some fire road then back into loamy earthy natural banked stuff in the trees before you were spat out at the finish, thankfully short of some northshore and a couple of minute spin along the tarmac to….

Stage 2 & 4. The pedalliest of the weekend, but still not too bad, a mix of quite tricky to nail tight tech and faster more open trails.

After a lunch break and another trip up the gondola you had the first proper pedal/push liaison up to Stage 5
A good 500m of fire road down to some open trails in new growth forest, then a mix of very rocky 4×4 with regular taped of excursions into the undergrowth.

Another flattish pedal along some road finally got you to Stage 6 & 7 under the Morrilion gondola. A sprint across grass and tarmac (for instant cure to constipation, try cornering at race speed on tarmac with full spikes), through a tunnel where you had to use the walls as a berm (again, try committing to that on full spikes), then some reet fast rooty loams trails, the odd short climb, and more fast rooty loamy trails.

Sunday featured just the 2 traces, each repeated twice. The main Samoens lift gave you most of the height gain, then it was a 30 minute ride push to stage 1/3 and another 30 minutes or so push to stage 2/4

Stage 1 & 3. A short uphill sprint along some fireroad lead to a punchy 10m high climb then about 150m of gently rising boggy singletrack ensured you were knackered as the ground dropped away beneath you and you were into a roller coaster of natural berms and ruts down the hill where often the best bet was just to hold on and hope you bounced out of the end of each section still in the right direction.

Stage 2 & 4. About as good as it gets in my book! A bit of everything, but mostly fast flowing singletrack in the trees. The only thing that didn’t feature was a real climb, all the pedalling was to go faster, not to just go.

So all in, a grand selection of trails with very little serious pedalling, but racing doesn’t always work out like racing and it definitely didn’t this time.

Milling around at the start of stage 1 during the obligatory delayed start the feel was more of a (massive) group ride than a race, a distinct lack of aggression and competitiveness in the air. The track was pretty slick, but fun. The only problem was if you fell, you were stuck on the ground like a beetle on it’s back with a serious fight on your hands (and knees) to get up. And as the course was narrow, if the rider in front of you went down, you were probably going into them and down. As would the rider behind you….

Stage 2 was much the same and, with only a short pause before heading back up, there was a quick clean of the bike, a swap to flats and a bite to eat before getting on the gondola for Stage 3.

Enduro racing is all about surprises, and the surprise waiting for us was the news that stage 4 was to be cancelled because it was too claggy. The reason this was a surprise was that on the first run down, stage 2 was way, way less claggy that stage 1. Still how bad could it be?

Worse than this years Megavalanche was the answer. According to Melanine Pugin at least and, as she won the Mega, she should probably know. The mud was so thick you had no warning between the bike feeling a bit slow and so much mud getting behind the fork brace you were flipped over the bars. If you had the strength to lift your 100kg bike, running was generally the quickest option. Until you fell over. The results from this stage were all over the place, but that’s racing.

Down to the pits, clean the bike and time for the secret weapon. Off with the wetscream/High roller combo, on with my 15 year old 1.9″ Michelin DH muds, from when spikes meant SPIKES.

Of course, this meant the next 3 trails were no where near as bad and had a fair bit of firm ground, but I think my sacrifice was worth it for the good of the group.

With the weather staying sunny through the day and into Sunday the trails were drying fast, but hopefully not going to unrideable clag again.

My lack of power to sprint up hills was made brutally apparent on stage 1 Sunday when my 10 second man, series ranked 17th Julien Roissard, passed me within 150m of the start before the trail headed downhill. I blamed still being on flats.

Stage 2 was going just brilliantly, with Julien taking until about 1/2 way to pedal past me and generally having so much fun I almost forgot that this is meant to be serious when I went over a blind rise into a sea of orange spraypainted rocks. Riding blind, fast, is one of the reasons I enjoy these races, unfortunately it wasn’t until 1/2 way through this rock garden I remembered I had a 1.9″ rear tyre with a tube in it. As the tube deflated I briefly considered doing an Aaron Gwin, but then realised that that would just be stupid, so shouldered the bike and started running. Only about a 1/3rd of the course to go. Still, if you feel you don’t get enough cheers at a race, wrap your tyre round your frame and get running, the crowd loves you!

Anyway, after a good feed (as ever, it’s almost worth doing the races for the free food and brake pads), a change to a big Minion DHF for the back and spuds on the bike, the day was reset with no aims of improving on my placings and instead just having fun. As the 2 stages were amongst the best I’ve raced all year, in fact stage 2/4 is one of the best trails I’ve ridden all year, this was pretty easy.

Neither Nina or I were particularly happy with our results over the weekend, but points mean prizes, or at least they hopefully do for Nina sitting in 3rd for the series going into the last round, I’m less hopeful that the prize fund makes it back to my end of the score sheet.

One more race to go then it’s autumn and the best time of year for some real riding.

03/09/2014