Megavalanche is almost upon us!!

kathg

Well, we are off to France tomorrow and am feeling super excited and equally kinda terrified!
All been going well in preparation including plodding and pushing up Snowdon after work to get maximum downhill practise in, my hands and forearms seem to be holding up well... as is the bike with it's shiny new huge rotors, bash ring, chain guide and very heavy DH tyres!!

Well, we'll have quite a few days to get used the terrain when we get there and hopefully I'll survive the race....just hope to get down and enjoy myself really!

Wish me luck everyone - I'll let you know how it all goes when I get back!!

miss notax

GOOD LUCK KATH

Enjoy yourself and keep smiling 8)

I really look forward to hearing about how it goes - not least because I think i'll be in the same situation next year :shock:

smallred

belated good luck! Didn't think to get online here beforehand and see if anyone was going, doh! I was no. 2048 - what was your number? Maybe we met!

kathg

Hi there, congrats on finishing...I was 2036. Boy what a great week that was eh!? I agree with all your comments too..! Only, we worked out that if you rode the main Mega course down to Oz you could get the cable car to the top of the qualifier without having to walk/push to the top of it from the Alpe d'Huez side! Cheeky tip to bear in mind for next time...
I ran into the Challenger blokes too... unavoidable to be honest.. unless you are gonna ride it at pro speed!

See ya next year!

smallred

My aim this year was just to be able to say I survived/did it once (later revised to doing it in under 3 hours, once a bit of competitiveness kicked in!), and was going to be happy with that. Now I want to go back next year and be fast enough to not have them catch up (at least until the wider bits!).

'Twould have been good to have ridden bits of the qualifier more than once - there were a few lines there that I totally missed/messed up and had to haul the bike down - then spotted totally rideable lines alongside, bah! Definitely going to be better informed next time

Did you guys fly/drive/package deal or what?

kathg

We drove out and then stayed in Hotel Vallee Blanche on a package deal with Flow MTB. This worked out really well as Petra Wiltshire and another guy were acting as reps for Flow and really gave us lots of good tips re. practise sessions and generally finding our way around etc. The food was great and hotel really friendly as were all the other riders staying there.
We spent quite alot of time on the quali track which paid off. Just a shame I had a bit of a collision with another girl in the race, came off and really hurt my ribs (turns out I broke em!!). So rode the main race loaded up on painkillers, going 'ooh, ouch, ouch' all the way down. Then to cap it all at the start of the forest my front brake broke.... fluid pouring out of it... so kinda slithered and fell down the rest of it!!
Still really enjoyed it though and def gonna do it next year... OH talking about entering the Mega on the island of Reunion next year though so who knows eh?!