A brief background and Morzine

A brief background and Morzine

OK so ridden a bike for years,  I’ve mountain biked for 13 years, mainly doing MTB Marathons (in fact I did the first ever UK MTB Marathon in Builth Wells back in 2000, I’m also a regular at the local Time Trial Series run by Clive Powell in Rhayader.  But one sport I’ve never had aspirations of riding has been Downhill (DH) and definitely not racing DH, for those not familiar with this format of racing simply you get a lift to the top of a steep hill and have to ride down to the bottom as quickly as possible, sounds simple, but the sadistic course designers have a warped idea of what constitutes a track and what is rideable!

 So why was it on the 2^nd September 2012 I found myself quivering on the starting mound of a DH race listening to the electronic beeper count me down at the start of a DH Race.

 It started about 12 years ago, when I met my now husband... He was racing DH at the time, but due to my blatant refusal to ride down any of the tracks he enjoyed, and my total lack of ability he gave up DH and we had great fun simply riding trails together.  I was still doing the MTB marathons and Darrel acted as my support team, eventually he decided to join me riding at these events and that’s when things started to change.  

Firstly Darrel convinced me to change my bike, as lovely as my NRS was it was too big, and Darrel kept telling me I needed ‘slacker angles’ and disc brakes, so along came my beloved Giant Trance in XS it did fit me a treat, and the disc brakes were a revolution.  

At the events I could no longer get off and push down anything that look scary as Darrel would look disapprovingly at me, and I was under pressure to keep up with him on the descents.  Then the Scottish MTB rounds started, with the excellent trail centres in Scotland we ended up making a holiday of it spending a week riding the 7 Staines centres.  Darrel couldn’t resist sneekingly turning down black graded trails.  My riding was however slowly improving and I went from being out of my comfort zone on red trails to Red being nicely within my comfort zone. 

Unfortunately in 2007 I had a serious fall off my horse, this left me on crutches for 6 month and a long rehabilitation afterwards.  I kept riding the bike but a long ride would result in me spending the next couple of day limping.  I was only able to ride the 25km events and my fitness suffered terribly.  I stuck with the time trials, but MTB’ing was limited to trail centres and local tracks.  Roll on a few years to 2011, Darrel and I had decided to book a Camel Trekking holiday in North Africa, but the unrest in Egypt spread and our tour operator pull out of the trip.  So we had a week booked off work with no holiday to go on and a lust to do something different. 

When Darrel and I had first started dating we had joked about going to Whistler or Chamonix MTB’ing, so when Darrel suggested a trip to the Alps I happily went along with the idea.  My inner voice told me that it was going to be hard biking, but Darrel kept telling me it would be just like Scotland but with Ski lifts to go up on.  Despite myself I believed him, even when he brought new 160mm travel forks and larger rotors for his bike; I got suspicious but told my nagging inner voice to shut up.  So on the 2^nd July we arrived in Morzine.  After putting bikes back together from the flight we wandered into town, the first thing that shocked me was all the bikes, bikes parked outside bars, bikes  being ridden, bike shops... it was cycling heaven, then I really noticed the bikes.  Pretty much 95% were big hitting DH bikes, duel crown forks and coil shocks!  The there were the riders, full face lids and pressure suits.  I’d brought my 100mm travel Giant Trance, and purchased some Knee Pads and elbow guards for my Alps trip, with my trusty XC lid.  I was already feeling out of depth, way out of depth and I’d not even been out on the bike yet.  Now without boring you too much I’ll explain Alp riding, the trails are graded the same as in the UK, Green – easy / family, Blue – Moderate, Red- intermediate, Black – Severe.  But in the Alps this grading is slightly warped.  Green = a red UK XC trail, Blue= a Black UK XC trail but all drops are ride-able and they are twice as steep and a massive leap up from Green trails, Red = pretty much the same as Blue, Black = could be anything!

 So you can imagine my first Morzine trip, 100mm of travel simply wasn’t enough and I spent the week scared out of my skin... even the XC routes were steep.  I fell off a few times and it took a week too built up my confidence to ride down a blue DH trail.  But I loved it, and met some amazing people and came home wanting more..

To be continued............