DH WC R6 - La Bresse, France 4-7/08/11

Thursday 4^th August (Drive to La Bresse and track walk)

Today dad woke up at 5am and in turn woke me up. Since we were awake and dad couldnt get back to sleep we decided to finish our journey to La Bresse, France. The trip was easy going, just followed the gps like every other time so far. We got there about 8am and just cruised around and did mundane stuff such as stock up on groccies etc. The track was very easy to find, we saw it straight away. At 2pm we registered and went up to walk the track. The top 30secs of the track was grass with a few wooden things on it such as a jump and some boardwalks. The start ramp was obviously wood but it finished with a drop. After the grass it was into a like a rock ditch jump which I had to pedal my arse off into in order to make it. And then it was into more grass but with rocks implanted in it. This was mostly what the track was like, there were a few natural jumps and stuff and then there were the man made ones in both wooden dirt form. The end of the track finished with a steep grass bit followed closely by grass lumps and dips you could double up before sending a wooden drop to enter the final jump.

Friday 5^th August (Practice day)

Today was the first day of practice. I could roughly remember the track, not really the order of things but what things looked like. I had already picked my lines while doing the track walk, and was going to try those out and check out other people lines throughout the day and give them a go.

First run down the hill I didnt really have any clue what I doing or what was up next on the track, once I relised what bit of track I was on, I knew what line I wanted to be on though. First run went smoothly enough, hit the wooden sender thing down the bottom, nearly cased it tho, was a bit bigger than I remembered it being. Throughout the day I slowly and constently ticked the other jumps and drops of my list. All apart from the last one. I was pretty put off of the end jump after watching one of the chicks full on nose case it and break her arm.

By the end of the day I pretty much just stuck with my lines. And tried to get them faster and smooter. Ruts were beginning to develop and chuck me all sorts of places and ways.

Saturday 6^th August (Qualifying)

So with practice up first, I thought I would do a few runs to warm up and do the end jump and also to make sure I could remember the track for qualifying. Things were going alright, I had the track a bit more dialed than yesterday. The only problem I was having was clearing the hip drop sorta jump thing halfway down the track. Third run down the track my rear wheel decided to fail, and im guessing it was from that drop. So I had to end up walking my bike down the bottom half of the track. Once I got the bottom, I went and asked the Mavic guys if they could fix my wheel for me, so they did. When I got it back, they pointed out that my rim was bent. I was Jason at this point as he was helping me fix some other things on my bike. They talked, and he got a rim off Mavic for me (not sure if I have to pay for it yet or not) It ended up being free. For my seeding run I just ran my cracked rim. I treated seeding a bit like a practice and a bit like a race run. I went fast but with a bit of cautionary side like I would in a normal race run but also tried to do things a bit differntly and see if some new markers I saw while I was practicing would be better than the current markers I had in my mind. One of the main markers worked better the my orginal one, which I was quite happy with. I nearly crashed about 2/3s of the way down the track, which I wasnt happy about tho. I ended up just getting into qualifying with a 19^th place.

Sunday 7^th August (Race day)

During the night it pissed down with rain, and had some decent amounts of wind judging by some of the tents in the pits and by what Jason said. Today was race day, First thing I did was go see Jason to get my wheel sorted and change front tyre to a mud. He started swapping over the spokes for me and then left me to it while he went to get Jill and make sure she was sorted and everything. Once I had put all the spokes in and put a mud on and Jason had finished with Jill I went to go get ready while he tightened up all the spokes and trued the wheel and stuff. Once that was all done I headed up the hill for a run. The track had changed quite a bit since yesterday, the ruts were worse. By the time I got up for a run, about 1hr after practice started the track was a lot more chewed up and a bit slushy up the top. I opted out of doing the rock up the top and also the hip turning jump half way down that reacked my wheel yesterday. I managed 3 runs before practice ended. I would have liked to have done at least another to try the rock gap. So now it was time to clean bike, change clothes and have a quick bit of food and drink before heading up for my race run. I got to the top with heaps of time to spare, and I hung out with Mannon Carpenter and her dad/manager. When it came time to starting I didnt know that they were starting, I was standing out side the tent, and assumed/figured that when I had to go line up they would tell me, but no one did. I only relised when I saw the person before me in the start gate. By the time I had relised that we were starting she had left the gate, so I had less than a min to get in the start gate put on and do up my helmet and goggles. Pretty much as soon as I had put my goggles on, it was time to leave the start gate. So that pretty much stuffed up my run right from the start. I managed to forget it and compose myself for the rest of the track. I ended up getting a bit lose and making heaps of mistakes just trying to push myself a bit to hard, I finially ended up crashing and im not entirely sure how or why that happened. I cant even remember where on I track I crashed, I forgot it that quickly. I ended up 18^th today. I wasnt too happy with my run, but I learnt my lesson and wont forget it for Val Di Sole. After the racing had finished we hit the road to head to Morzine before going to Pila. About half way to Morzine we pulled over into a carpark and set up camp for the night.