It is still raining.
It is still bloody cold.
It is still foggy.
I was not especially keen to repeat yesterday’s route, and
indeed still had quite a lot of it stuck to my bike, despite spending ages with
the jet wash, so I therefore confined myself to the qualifying track and did
two runs from the second lift, DMC2 down to the finish in Huez village.
Not me, I'm taking the picture this time.
I quite like the section through Alpe d’Huez, some nice
swoopy corners, jumps and a tunnel, and then into a succession of tight steep
berms as we dropped down to Huez.
The lift back from Huez was rather slow, mainly down to the
fact that it could only take five bikes at once.
Also not me. There are a lot of people here who aren't me.
After the second run the rain had eased off a little and so
we decided to ride back up to where we were camped, rather than face queuing
for the lift again. Climbing a couple of thousand feet on downhill bikes in
body armour and full face helmets isn’t as easy as it sounds but we made it,
almost as wet from sweat as from the rain.
As the rain worsened again we had a ‘why haven’t we thought
of this before’ moment and decided to move campsite into the underground
carpark. This was a stroke of genius, we could hang wet kit out and attempt to
dry it, tinker with our bikes in the dry and without the cold making our hands
numb and even managed to get the gas stove going without the wind blowing the
flame out.
Before
After
The weather was of course the main topic of conversation
down at the main arena. With the problems getting the helicopter up to the
glacier would they be able to run the race from there? What would they do if
they can’t? They must have contingency plans for events like this. Time will
tell.
My bike
Some of you may have spotted in the picture of my bike above that the forks don't seem to be getting anywhere near full travel. Probably time for a service...
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