Tag Archives: race

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

Posted on 17th July 2017
Yeah, I know the image quality is terrible, but if you wanted a better idea why didn't you go yourself?
Once again, La Thuile knocks it out the park and out my hands at enduro racing. Superenduro Round 3.
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Enduro des Belleville

Posted on 16th August 2016
Nina on stage 3. Have I mentioned it was a really good stage?
Enduro des Belleville 2016, the best enduro race in the world? Mibbies.
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La Thuile EWS, Veni Vidi Perdidi*

Posted on 21st July 2016
Ciao La Thuile, see you soon.

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 … [Read full post]

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Four have fun in Finale

Posted on 6th October 2015
After the race briefing. You miss the sea in Chamonix.

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 … [Read full post]

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Tignes Coupe du France 2015 #6

Posted on 27th August 2015
Type 1 fun.

“Chamonix Bike Blog” does imply a blog about biking in Chamonix, so I’ll concede there’s been some mission drift with the amount of race write ups from places that are not Chamonix of late. Dinnay fret, this one’s the Coupe du France season finale so we’ll be back to proper riding for the next month.

And it’s my blog so I’ll do what I want regardless.

Tignes then. A mere 2hr away and the lifts are free, so Sandy and I headed over on Friday early enough to sample the trails. If your main experience of lift companies is in … [Read full post]

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Enduro World Series round 4, Samoens

Posted on 23rd July 2015
Finish line Stage 5 Sunday.It's all over bar the swimming.

Aye, so, err….World series enduro racing. Just round the valley from home. Couldn’t really not enter.

Turn up on Friday for registration, stupidly assuming it would be in the same virtually purpose built structure as last years Coupe du France registration. Obviously it’s not and spend 30 minutes randomly riding about till I find the small hall it’s now in. Nina was chatting away to Joe Barnes in the queue so I shamelessly skip in.

After tracking down some more water and joking about the mudguard in the goodie bag we chat to Isa and Enrico, then with the stage … [Read full post]

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Millau, Coupe du France 2015 #3

Posted on 2nd July 2015
Special 1 with yon bridge in the background. This is probably the flattest bit of the course.

I re-read last week’s blog on Val d’Allos, and it was shit. Nothing to say, and said badly. I suspect this is because I had a great time and was pretty happy. Happiness does not create art.

Edvard Munch and the Scream: Not happy Ian Curtis and Closer: Not happy Sylvia Plath and The Bell Jar: Not happy Pharrel Williams and Happy: Shit.

Therefore, this should be a cracking post. (Don’t get your hopes up).

Round 3 of the Coupe du France was down in the Midi Pyrenees in Millau. You’ve probably not heard of Millau but it’s where Norman … [Read full post]

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Val d’Allos Coupe du France 2015 #2

Posted on 25th June 2015
Nico showing how it's done, Stage 3.

“Moasting” Verb: Signifying the combination of moaning and boasting, often employed by celebrities. cf: “Yeah Bro, around about my 12th lap of Brevent of the day my arms really started to feel the burn. etc”

Yes, you learn a new thing every day, and on Saturday that thing was the word moasting. Mostly because we were all complaining about how we had to ride a 20 or so minute mostly DH piece of singletrack, then ride some more pretty good trail (and 1 awesome trail.). It’s a hard life and I can tell your heart bleeds.

So goes Val … [Read full post]

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Blausasc, Coupe du France #1

Posted on 13th May 2015
It's not all rocks and roots, you get some slick village centre limestone slabs here too.

It must be summer, we’re going racing, and like last year the Coupe du France enduro series opened in the heat of the Alpes-Maritimes coast at Blausasc.

Unlike last year’s races though, Spencer was injured and Nina racing DH in Sweden so Sandy had the honour of co-piloting for the relaxing short drive down to Nice, through Nice, out of Nice, round random villages trying to find where we were, back into Nice then on to Barre des Alpes, the closest place we could find cheap digs.

When organising ourselves back in winter we’d anticipated the usual Chamonix spring of … [Read full post]

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Coupe du France Enduro series round 5, Valberg

Posted on 10th September 2014
Stage 2 practice. It was pretty much this awesome all the way down.

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 … [Read full post]

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