Well, the Mountain of Hell race lived up to it's name for me last weekend. We had another amazing week of riding in the French Alpes, at Les deux Alpes this time. Great weather, great friends and really good trails. After a slow start due to complete and utter fatigue after the Mega, I really got into these tracks and was super excited to get racing again. The qualifying track was incredibly technical, more so than the Mega track and would be way more suited on a DH bike, but my new Carbon Nomad was absolutely incredible. The best bike ever! After a crazy start on a wide fire road, the track went straight up the steepest two climbs. I got the whole shot at the start and then battled it out on the climbs with two other girls. It was insane how steep this was right after the start when you are completely frantic and your lactic levels are sky high. I got passed on the climb, but managed to overtake again on the next downhill section. From there on I got into a great rhythm and managed to get quite a big lead on the girls, only to get a front flat. Bummer. This meant I got a bad start position for race day on the glacier. O boy, and bad it was. Line 20 for the start on the glacier for me.
I tried to make the best of a pretty bad situation and still had my eye on the podium. I knew it could be done and I was ready to dig deep. Very deep. The glacier was amazing, it was hard and fast and I managed to get by a lot of people and get back into the mix of the girls. I was back in business, until I realized I had a rear flat. That was that. No chance of the podium for me today. After that realization, I stayed calm, changed my flat and just rode down the track to enjoy the whole experience, to soak up the amazing views and to see how many guys I was able to pass. I managed to still end up in 7th place. Not too shabby considering this was a weekend of mechanical hell for me from the get go.
Sven, on the other hand, killed it. He finished in 9th place overall - putting him in 3rd place for the Masters category. He was second off the glacier and finally had a good run at a race. Awesome.
Thanks again to all for a great weekend of riding.
Cheers!
Anka
