The Mega

Didn't have any time to write the blog over there, as I was either tearing down a hill gripped on for dear life, or asleep trying to recover from the previously mentioned activity.

First off though was my birthday. We all went out on mass for dinner

Birthday boy on the night. Lainie decided because it was my birthday that she was going to freak me out by pulling funny faces and scaring me.... and it worked.I thought i would definitely put a picture of her up here as a sort of pay back!As the evening progressed things got gradually worse ( as can be seen from above) - the rest is a fuzzy mess that is best left unrepeated and unwritten.

So onto the practicing of the race courses. We had two races to do, the qualifier and the main race. The qualifier track was a shorter course but faster and more DH bike orientated. The race course started up at 3350m on the snow and ice and we had to ride across a glacier then through the rock field into the alpine meadows and then down into the tree line to a small village called Allemont at 730m. Killer.

Come the day of the qualifiers we are all feeling a little nervous and excited of what is to come, a few of us less than others having previously raced this race 2 years ago. Frank at the start line of the qualifier. It is a Mass start of 200 riders all going hell for leather for a small line into a bend. Very scary and fun at the same time if that is possible. To cut a long story short we all did rather well in the qualifiers, all placed well and no one had any major spills. Below is the video of Frank's and Euan's Start of the Qualifier..... see it for yourself and imagine being in that!

Lara just coming through the finishing line. She did amazingly and I was very proud of her as she only had got her DH bike about 8 months ago and flew down the course!

So all done with the qualifiers. We all felt a little beat up and tired. Onto the Main race. For those of you who ride bikes I am sure they will have heard of this race and it's reputation. I can confirm to you it is totally justified and correct. It is 100% crazy, not in a extreme mental sort of way, but more a 'who the hell came up with the stupid idea' sort of way.

So here we are at the top of Pic Blanc (3300m) at 6:45am freezing our proverbial tits off. Due to the volume of people taking part in the race you have to go up very early to get the snow on the glacier as hard as possible, great. It was at this point that Lara's fear really kicked in. The idea of lining up with 90 other women and riding down a glacier as fast as possible seemed to loose its appeal. Scott being the good friend he is kindly offered to take her place and race with the women. hmmm, good try Scott. So they all lined up and the starter gun went off and all the girls went hammering off down the hill.
The lady at the front is 10 times Downhill mountain biking world champion and Gold medalist at BMX'ing, so you can see the pedigree of the women there.

It was at this point it was time for all us men to get wobbly knees as it was getting close to our turn. we all sat there and said we were fine, but truth be told we were all bricking it!

we all lined up and as soon as the gun went all nerves went, it was race time! it is all a bit of a blur, but all i can say it that is was blur of sweat , pain, breathing out of ones arse and complete and utter brilliant fun for around and hour and a half.

Me at the finish. Not sure of the results yet as they are not out, but we all did ourselves proud. Non of us near winning but the world's best are here doing it so we were never going to win. We do know Lara's result. She came 38th out of 80 women, Seeing that just under half of these women are seasoned racers or sponsored racers with teams looking after then and there own websites etc... she did amazingly well. better than all us blokes really. shhhh but we don't like to give her a big head!

The finishers. Scott was there as well but he was that broken he was lying at our feet!

The big question is ..... what is next, how do we top the Mega Avalanche!