Sorry no pics at the moment, my camera is locked in a mates room for the next week.
Finally got out on the bike again. Pleney has opened it’s gondola early this year and Les Gets is open from this weekend so there are runs to be done! Pleney was riding more like Weston beach race the first day I hit it, massive ruts in every corner and the wooded sections were pretty much underwater. Needless to say the track is absolutely shot already.
With so many proven techniques now available for trailbuilding I don’t know how a place manages to get it wrong time after time. Morzine decided that the Pleney needed a spruce up and a bit more variety so set to with the Bobcat and spades, but doing all this the week before the lifts opened is not the time! Nothing had time to settle or bed in before it was torn to shreds on opening weekend… Despite the rumours flying around there are no major alterations or new tracks just a bit of tweaking to the old one.
That said some of the changes are for the better and there is a new right-hander after the tunnel that is just awesome, especially with the great big stinking rut in the middle of it at the moment. Everyone is railing this one with their heels on the floor!
I rounded off my first weeks riding with a trip to the Cabinet medical for a bit of embroidery to my leg following a tumble. It was a classic mud crash, the front wheel spins up and starts drifting and then hits a rut flicking round to full lock and pitching me over the bars….the pedal snagged my leg and took a few strips of it away leaving me with 11 stitches and an enforced day off.
There’s a big road race in town this weekend, Le Dauphin. It’s like a mini Tour de France from what I can gather. It’s pretty incredible to see how pro the road cycling world is compared to MTB, they took over the whole of town with enormous motorhomes and hospitality areas, every hotel had a big fleet of team vehicles outside and mechanics beavering away. In downhill were impressed with a few E-Z ups and a workstand, to us thats a pro pit area, occasionally someone has a promotional vehicle but generally thats it. The trucks these guys had had laundry’s and kitchens in the back, some unfolded into little cafe’s for selected big-wigs and they all had at least two support cars prickling with spare wheels and bikes. The whole circus was packed up again in hours and dissapeared to the next stop on the tour…
Incidentally the riders themselves were racing on the streets of Morzine for about 15 mins.
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