Proper Mountain Biking

Day 5…(Thursday 19/6/2008) – Lets race up and down some mountains….

A great day in the mountains dawned once more. Today, it’s “La Mavic Free Trail” – a 57km race starting from the glacier at 3200m (Mountain of Hell starts at 3400m). Just the one uplift (to 3200m) on this one, followed by 3377m descending and 1438m of ascent. Yes that’s right – ASCENT.
I went up to the Glacier to get some footage of the start, as well as Gaz, Elsa and Steveo were also racing. This was their first trip upto 3200m – the thing that struck me was the huge amount of snow. Basically, the entire run from 3200m to the next lift station at 2600m was snow! At this point I was glad I wasn’t racing, because I would have ended up falling off way too much. Heres the racers after exiting the top lift…

Heres the first few racers lining up at the start..

The start was fun, lots of people sliding and falling, although some folks appeared to have a good technique.
I then made my way down, hoping to get some shots at various points, I think most of the video will be pants. Then the Jandri Express I lift was stopped and I couldn’t get back to the resort – so I took the Jandri 2 (which is a telepherique type of lift, basically 2 big cabins, rather than a telecabine which is lots of little cabins) – I ended up at around 2100m at the top of a big climb (in fact the big climb I had to push up last year due to a lift closing at lunch time) – I saw the eventual winner get to this point in around 40minutes, Gaz arrived in about 1hr 10mins. Here he is out of the saddle up a tough little climb….
I then went down the Village telesiege (sit on bench type exposed lift), never been on this one, ends up at Les Deux Alpes 1850m, so a bit of a stroll back to 1600m where the main village is, but great views of the resort from the lift…
Now for a scout around the exhibitors tents. There are lots of them; it’s a pretty good setup. Unfortunately, no session 88 yet, although the trek man said it might be here “for viewing only” in the next few days. However, you can test loads of different bikes, theres the Trek Remedy, Specialized Pitch and Demo 7, Cannondales new Moto, all sorts of good stuff. The Hope guys are here, along with their dinky bike…

And my first spyshot – the new Saint shadow rear mech. Check the gold link. Blingtastic! This could be the reason to switch back to Shimano…hmmmm…what you think Craig? There is loads going on, trails bike displays, and also some changes to the bike park for the Dirt Jump comp, heres the somewhat large drop in, not all the guys liked the look of this, but this guy did - nice style. I unfortunately missed Gaz cross the finish line, but here is Steveo and Elsa. Elsa finished 5th woman a well worthy finish by anyones reckoning. Well done Elsa. Top 5 in Megavalanche would be nice too, if you can oblige please ;) By all accounts the route was a real killer, so well done to all who finished. I suspect I would have chucked my bike off a cliff when I got to that big climb I pushed up last year ;)We then had some free food (pasta!) and some free Vin Rouge (yay!). We watched the prize giving, and had a couple of beers. Caught up with Si in the Secret finally, and got the number for free wifi internet access.

I have decided to stay off the bike until Les Gets now (next Wednesday) – so Gaz will be doing Biker Croute (42km lift assisted, 4940m descent) on Friday and the FreeRaid (54km lift assisted, 6225m descent) on Sunday.
I am knackered even thinking about that much bike riding. Actually very jealous, lots more snow riding practice....

And finally, heres Gaz modelling the Giro Remedy helmet. Good colour cooridination here, I think we can all learn something from Gazs' effortless style and finesse... Did someone mention LEGO?