XC Racer Blog Post

Still Raining

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BY: Andrew Howett

Published: 13th July, 2014


It is still raining.

It is still bloody cold.

It is still foggy.

I was not especially keen to repeat yesterday’s route, and indeed still had quite a lot of it stuck to my bike, despite spending ages with the jet wash, so I therefore confined myself to the qualifying track and did two runs from the second lift, DMC2 down to the finish in Huez village.

 Not me, I'm taking the picture this time.


I quite like the section through Alpe d’Huez, some nice swoopy corners, jumps and a tunnel, and then into a succession of tight steep berms as we dropped down to Huez.

The lift back from Huez was rather slow, mainly down to the fact that it could only take five bikes at once. 


 Also not me. There are a lot of people here who aren't me.


After the second run the rain had eased off a little and so we decided to ride back up to where we were camped, rather than face queuing for the lift again. Climbing a couple of thousand feet on downhill bikes in body armour and full face helmets isn’t as easy as it sounds but we made it, almost as wet from sweat as from the rain.

As the rain worsened again we had a ‘why haven’t we thought of this before’ moment and decided to move campsite into the underground carpark. This was a stroke of genius, we could hang wet kit out and attempt to dry it, tinker with our bikes in the dry and without the cold making our hands numb and even managed to get the gas stove going without the wind blowing the flame out.


 Before


After


The weather was of course the main topic of conversation down at the main arena. With the problems getting the helicopter up to the glacier would they be able to run the race from there? What would they do if they can’t? They must have contingency plans for events like this. Time will tell.


 

My bike


 

Some of you may have spotted in the picture of my bike above that the forks don't seem to be getting anywhere near full travel. Probably time for a service...





Blogger Info:


Andrew
 

Andrew Howett

Age: 33
Location: Scottish Borders. A big improvement, topographically if not meteologically, over my home of South Lincolnshire.
XCRacer/Scimitar team member
Racing since 1999, racing 24hrs since 2010

www.andrewhowett.blogspot.com

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This blog post was written by a third party and their views do not necessarily reflect the views of XCRacer.com

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