Sussex-MTB » race report

Uncle Si & Steve (Old Spice) Do The 2010 Pass Portes Du Soleil 2010

Hummerlicious — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 18:37:47 +0000

For those of you that don’t know, this is an MTB event held in both France & Switzerland in the Portes du Soleil region of the French Alps (one of the largest skiing areas in the world) and in the summer it becomes a trail centre of giant proportions! It is not a race and the circuit is approximately 75km taking in a mixture of Alpine Single Track, downhill and fire trails with most ascending done via chairlifts/bubble lifts adapted to take your bike. Seven resorts are spread across the region with Chatel taking its turn this year to host the bike festival. A multitude of lifts take you to exhilarating long downhill & ‘lush single track’ that goes on for mile after mile. In short, Mtb heaven!

Si & Steve

Booking our places proved to be our first challenge. In our naivety we thought that we would be sending a one-line email to some cosy French tourist office, but it was nothing of the sort! Instead registration was done via the worlds most complex sports activity website! Places were disappearing at an alarming rate, counting down in real time. With three minutes to spare and 3 attempts for payment to be accepted by credit card we were in and registered to start at our chosen point of Morzine (or so we thought….).

However, it wasn’t long before we noticed our first problem; Steve was booked for the Saturday and I was booked to start on the Sunday!!…..

Ever the salesman, Steve later managed to sweet talk Mademoiselle into changing me to the Saturday. As this was our first time, we had no idea that the ppds could be done on both the Saturday as well as Sunday…….So it was a done deal, we were registered for the 2010 event.

Soon enough the big weekend is upon us. Steve had done a great organisational job and we were staying next door to Endless Ride with Gareth and his other guests that turned out to be 20 bikers from the Lake District (I think they must have been twinned with Sussex Mtb, all the characters were there!).

The first problem was the interpretation of Easy Jet’s baggage allowance. We were worried that my Attack Trail 6.8 & Steve’s Spicy 316 would exceed the allowance. Steve being determined to win the pre check in weight race, bought a pair of Mavic Crossmax wheels with tubeless Conti tyres (nice). In case anyone is interested, the limit for any one item appears to be 32kG with no excess baggage allowance for bikes. With this in mind both bikes were packed into hired boxes for the flight to Geneva.

The flight was 2 hours late owing to a French national strike (bless them) so that put paid to any riding when we arrived on the Thursday (24th June). Instead we felt the need to ‘warm up/get into the groove’ on Friday. In all honesty this was perhaps a bit of a mistake, a bit like taking a kid to a sweet shop and not buying too many sweets! 45 miles and 6 hours later we thought we’d better stop!!

The Friday evening meal at the Hotel, which was now overrun with bikers, was shared with the Northern boys who all seemed to be equipped with Orange P5’s & Alpine 160’s. Carl, also a Mountain biker, was the cook! The food was fantastic but after too much Single Track & alcohol the adrenalin must have been running and neither of us slept well that night……

Getting up on the Saturday to register at 7.00 am was not good. However it turned out to be a painless procedure and every one was given a goodie bag by way of an Mtb rucksack with a free lift pass that was put to good use on the Sunday. Friday was also half price! With all these freebies and an entry fee of 45 Euro, this has to be something of an Mtb bargain.

We finally hit the trails at about 9.30 via the Super Morzine lift. There was some serious looking coil sprung machinery in the lift queue and most people seemed to have full-face hats. By this time I was feeling a little pensive….

Off the bubble lift we were soon on a long ascent across the ‘Panoramique’ towards Avoriaz. There was more climbing than I ever expected and you wouldn’t want to pedal a Lapierre 920 with Fox 40 RC2’s uphill. These guy’s were pushing. The first thing you notice is the increased lack of breath due to the altitude, but this was soon neutralised with a drop in over rocks leading to the first of the downhill descents and there were a lot of them! (Super Lush in the immortal words of Jimbo).

In some ways for an aging weekend warrior like me, the testing terrain was not always as daunting as I thought because the obstacles, rocks and drop in’s come at such a pace that there is no time to contemplate and you are forced to make very quick decisions on the lines to be taken. However, there is a new downhill trail at Les Lindaretes that certainly induced a fair bit of buttock clenching. It was very steep with 60 degree berms, but having made it down in one piece made the grin factor even greater.

Later in the day a rocky scree slope at Lindaretes claimed its first fatality by way of a hole in Steve’s new tubeless rear tyre. This turned out to be a long story and having stopped at the Mavic service point, Monsieur Mavic claimed to have fixed it but it went down again on the chairlift back to the top; miles from anywhere. Once again this opened the tubeless or not tubeless debate. This was real bike munching territory & I don’t suppose that anything short of solid tyres would be guaranteed to survive!

By now, I was running low on fuel. With Chatel in the distance the rocky trails morphed into bermed sweeping single track leading to a Patisserie & Coke stop. Before this we passed through the Chatel Bike Park, which has some particularly fantastic trails. However, be warned and do not ignore yellow signs with black crosses; they inevitably lead to death defying jumps across 20’ ravines! Do not attempt unless your name is Steve Peat (or Hooper!)

Having topped up and had a brief visit to the Pharmacy for blister remedies (& change my incontinence pants) we headed to the Swiss town of Morgins for a lunch rest stop of soup, jambon & cake. Superb and all free.

Early afternoon having passed over the single track ridge with the stunning views of the Dentes Du Midi peaks (photo with bike in foreground) we like many others took a wrong turn but had a far more interesting decent towards Champary, but we were off the sign posted route. After some tough Swiss riding, blisters on the hands were getting worse and rear brake pads were getting low. Suddenly without warning at the top of a gnarly drop in I nearly collided with a biker walking back up the trail after bottling the up and coming decent! Having had a quick look over the edge I couldn’t blame him. Determined not to do the same I turned round and did another run up and successfully over we went. Its sad but I was chuffed to have done this one….

We descended back into France via Champery and down to the feed stop at Linderettes. Finally the day was drawing to an end as we dropped back down via the ‘Stingers’ through trees to the long, very rooty and fast rocky final decent back to Morzine.

53 miles & 8 hours having registered 37mph off road, the event finished in Morzine Town Square with free beer and a sound track being produced by an unusually good French rock band (no, really!)

Post event we hit Robinsons bar with 60 other grubby and knackered bikers.

Not one was without a major grin from ear to ear!!!!!!

Lessons learned:

• An adjustable seat post would be lovely.

• Carry a spare tyre and at least one tube. Note: buying a High roller in Morzine will cost 40-50 Euro’s! So take them out with you.

• Don’t ride for too long on the day before!

• Spare brake pads.

• A hard-hitting trail bike is good. Not a downhill monster as it will kill you up hills with the thin air!

• Many were wearing full-face hats. Not essential but the terrain makes you think.

Swotty

Brass Monkeys Enduro round 2 – 28th Dec 2009

Hummerlicious — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 21:20:52 +0000

It was billed as a post Christmas Indulgence tonic, and was just what I needed after a few too many calories and just a splash or two of fine wine. I only decided to enter a few days before, so there was very little time for preparation, just a run on the Saturday and a brief 25 min blast on my gorgeous new road bike to stretch the legs on Sunday.

I’m well known for not getting on with Enduro events, having a reliable tendency to go too fast and blow up after a couple of hours, so I entered the 2 hour category – hardly really an enduro, but a good challenge for me with a really wide age cat of 16 – 40 that would test these creaky 35 year old legs.

Chilly start

The morning dawned really chilly, a heavy frost on the ground and a beautiful clear blue sky above, perfect race conditions. The original Ash Ranges course was billed as 8 miles, but was shortened to around 6 due to foresting. This meant that I reckoned I should get onto a 5th lap before the 2 hr cut off.

I lined up about 4 rows back from the front of a massive field (109), ready to have fun, and without great expectations of a top result – top 20 would be great considering the field size and age!

Start line

After shivering on the line for a few minutes, the hooter went and we set off up the start hill, jostling for position. The course quickly headed up a really steep section which had most off the bike, although I just about managed to find a clear line and made it up. The course proved to be pretty good, nice singletrack sections, with plenty of open tracks giving passing room. There were also quite a few short sharp climbs and descents to test the skill (and cause a few slow processions!). My first lap went well; I was enjoying myself, warmed up nicely and found a good flow. I completed it in a tad under 27 mins, getting great support from my usual support crew as I crossed the line and set off on lap 2. I’d made a pact with myself to keep on top of my energy levels so downed a gel and cracked on.

Race time

There’s a slightly crazy element in me that has to clean climbs, the steeper the better, and that was the challenge for lap 2 – complete them all with no dabs, which I managed to achieve. There were two large water splash puddles per lap and by the time I’d done them on the second lap my feet were numb cold, although most of the rest of the lap was mud free – frozen! The last section of the lap wound around a couple of the rifle ranges, and care was needed as several times the course popped out of the trees onto the frosty grassed edges, each time into a tight bend – I saw 4 people go down on the slippery grass, and heeded the warning to go careful!

The course was pretty congested through the first 4 laps – the 4 hour guys had started 15 mins ahead, so very quickly there were around 250 riders on the 6 mile course, although it was encouraging to be passing people all the time, and I was able to use the fact that I had to follow some guys to keep a check on my speed and stay in control of my heart rate.

Race time

All this meant that I found myself crossing the line to start my 5th lap with 10mins to go before the cut off, so knowing that lap 5 would be my finale, I was keen to buck my usual trend and finish fast. I was feeling good and strong, and really up for a good last lap, having absolutely no idea how I was doing in relation to anyone else. I managed to clean all the climbs again, which I was chuffed with, got through the watersplash, with a huge wobble – only sheer will power kept me out of the freezing muddy water – and on, up over the heathland on top of the ranges, passing other riders frequently.

I managed to complete the race with a flourish as I raced a rider down the last singletrack descent, passing him at the bottom and heading on to the finish line, completing the race in 5th place, which was a real bonus surprise. Might well be up for the final round after this…

Big Daddy

Mountain mayhem

Hummerlicious — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 05:48:31 +0000

Mayhem time

We’re all off to Mountain Mayhem for the weekend, if you’re interested to see how it’s all going there will be photos and updates posted here, assuming there’s a phone signal!