The Megavalanche has always been on my to-do list and finally this year I got round to doing it. Even the tall tales from people who had ridden it couldn’t do justice to the scale and craziness of the event. Even the start above the snow was bordering on unrideable, let alone with 500 riders breathing down my neck, it was just a case of getting out of there as fast as possible and trying to leave the carnage behind.

Mega Avalanche start

The action started with the qualifying rounds on Friday, with 9 rounds of 200 riders each. The tight gravel hairpins straight out of the gate were the first potential for carnage, remember there are 25 riders per row all going to single file within the first 10 seconds of the race, but I left everyone else to pile up on the popular inside lines, scooting round the slower but safer outsides instead. 25 minutes later and barely able to grip the bars I finished 8th in my round, good enough for a 3rd row in the main event.

popping out at the end of the qualifier

Normally the race starts on snow. Well it did this year too I suppose, but the patch of snow was only just big enough to line everyone up on before it turned to piles of shattered rock which we were to ride along at a 30-degree camber. This was a recipe for disaster and I picked a safe route, it wasn’t fast but I got out of most of the trouble pretty quick. Not everyone was so lucky and as you can see from the picture below it quickly turned into a scene from Dante’s Inferno or perhaps an Orc battle in the Lord of the Rings.

Megavalanche start turns into a battleground

After the rocks the course went back onto the more traditional glacier, followed by the most amazing high Alpine singletrack you could ever imagine. Actually most of the course was singletrack this year, great for riding but not so great for passing and after I binned it up on the snow there was nothing for it but to be patient and wait for safe passing places. Still I got to the bottom in one piece, in 71st place which is OK for a first attempt. I guess I’ll be back for more one day with a load of lessons learned.

Riders spread out across the glacier

A combination of awesome downhill skills, raw power and some NoTubes rims saw our team rider Dan winning the Ae Forest Avalanche Enduro last weekend. A full report will be up soon, but for now just enjoy the Euro music from the prize presentation…

Avalanche trophy

The Avalanche Enduro was held in Kielder forest on the 25/26th May, it was a good event with decent weather and better than expected trails.

Saturday we checked out the event stages ridding them all twice, there was a mix of loamy bits but mostly trail center stuff which was sandstone based so sandy with lots of loose rocks. The stages were around 4 mins long and most required a fair amount of pedaling to keep the speed up. Stage 4/7 was used on Saturday afternoon as a prologue to seed riders for Sunday, this was probably the flattest stage so was a real suffer-fest but I got down it in a time better than it felt. This result did however mean an early start time on Sunday of 8:40 to head up the hill, the time allowances to get between stages were quite relaxed giving plenty of time at the start of the day and getting tighter as the event progressed, if you had a problem then things started to get interesting.

My first stage was the most fun in practice with sweet dry loamy bends as well as dark greasy woods sections but come Sunday morning it occurred about 2 coffees too early in my day and I minced my way down with lots of little mistakes.

> read more…

just in Dan Darwood reports on the first round of the SDA:-

Scottish Downhill Association

I went racin’ this weekend. It was the first round of the SDA up past Aberdeen at Pitfichie… a long way from anywhere
and once I had some beers I was putting the tent up (badly) at 1:00 on Saturday morning. The course had no uplift but
the push up wasn’t too bad for a 3 minute run, it was dry and dusty and I got a wee bit of sun burn yesterday (doh!)
even though there was a frost overnight.

The top was flattish through the heather with loads of granite bedrock slabs, it then went into the woods where it was
all full of embedded rocks to hit and a couple of sweet bermed corners before a flattish traverse (again with more
embedded rocks) and the final berms and jumps to the finish. Initial practice was hard work but after some lunch I
adjusted my tyre pressures, tried a few different shock settings and put clips on, this plus some additional confidence
meant I finished the day happy that I knew the course and wasn’t riding too much like a numpty.

My first run was a 2:49 and put me in 5th in the Masters, I had made a mistake in the rocks put was pretty pleased. For the second run I managed to hit all my lines reasonably clean but was tired and didn’t pedal as much as the first time down (I had used too much energy in practice and pushing up) but I managed to take a second off my time which was my goal. A few other folks went faster and I got bumped down to 6th, 10 sec off the category winner. I was still in the top third and was pleased with the result, I can see where improvement can be made if I want to work on stuff (bigger forks would have been nice too). Overall it was a very good weekend, top weather, a course in great condition, good folks and a very mellow atmosphere.

Results:
http://www.sda-races.com/sda/viewrace.asp?RaceID=1562

Seb has sent through the 2009 DH season listed out and we thought we’d share it with you incase anyone’s interested in travelling and racing every weekend for 2009!

Date Race
07/12/2008 MiniDH (Forest of Dean)
14/12/2008 Hamsterley / UKBP
21/12/2008
28/12/2008
04/01/2009

> read more…

Some shonky photos from a dangerous midnight liaison, not as dangerous as the night club where I got a nose bleed and 2 black eyes. For those not in the know (as I wasn’t) a bike derby is where you ride round and knock people off until someone’s left riding. Sounds OK in concept but on concrete with lots of drunk single speeders even the local yoof just watched from the sidelines while this years bike porn was discarded to make way for the latest sparkley thing next year.

We spent a couple of days watching the 4X and DH (no not the XC, how hypocritical) and seem to have less idea of what went on than most people that weren’t there – but we can tell you what line everyone took over a certain section, having spent the DH wandering around the middle of the course.
It was a day for crashes and breakages all round with lots of scuffed riders coming down, a few flats, chains off and someone had their butt hanging out of a skin suit. Steve Peat apparently managed to have his saddle snap on the gondola on the way up. A couple of people managed to crash in front of us.

1.Here’s David Vazquez Lopez making for the dirt.
2. Neil Donoghue surfing the mud.
3. Dan Atherton going for a no footer.

Predictably the Tour has descended into farce yet again, and after such a nice sunny start in London too. One by one the big names are dropping as the positive tests keep coming and it’s obvious that no-one can be trusted.

It’s not even as though they are doing it in a subtle way. Rasmussen, notably dire against the clock, produced an amazing time trial in stage 13 which saw him lose only a small amount of time to the winner, Vinokourov [results on cyclingnews.com]. “You can trust me”, he had said during interviews on the first rest day when asked about doping, prompting an old associate to go public about vials of cow medicine. Ras-moo-sen’s defence since then has been to remind the world that he has had 14 negative doping tests in this Tour, but then of course someone in his position wouldn’t be so careless as to have anything show up in tests.

Unlike Vino that is. In a Landis-style comeback Vinokourov went from losing almost 30 minutes to the leaders on stage 14 to winning stage 15 in spectacular style. Unsurprisingly there came shortly afterwards a Landis-style announcement of a positive doping test, this time for homologous blood transfusions rather than Landis’ testosterone irregularities. The “good doctor”, his suspicion-laden “coach” Dr Ferrari didn’t bat an eyelid though, posting on his website 53×12.com “In a breakaway for 140 km, he [Vinokourov] passed over the top of the Port de Bales with a 6 minute advantage on the yellow jersey group and lost only 30 seconds over the last 40 km, basically riding alone”. Mmm hmm.

The main thing I have got out of all this (as if I needed reminding) is that when a top pro says they are clean, they are probably lying. Maybe some aren’t but they are trailing round somewhere near the back of the field like Bradley Wiggins and David Millar. It reminds me of a TV programme I saw a few years ago, when Louis Theroux hung around with some body builders for a few weeks. Even though there was a Clean Mr Universe competition, and a plain old Mr Universe competition, the non-clean competitors just couldn’t bring themselves to say publicly that they doped. They used every euphemism possible but wouldn’t acknowledge publicly that they were injecting all sorts and I am sure it’s the same in pro cycling, they just can’t bring themselves to accept what they’re up to. Even when they get caught it’s all still the same old “suspicious French testing lab” excuses and denials.