French Alps Mountain Biking

Downhill Mountain Biking may not be the best preparation for a freestyle kayaking World Championships (2 weeks before heading out to the event), but I knew it would be fun, and I figured all I needed to do was 'not break myself' and it would all be good! It was good, I didn't totally break myself, just one slight injury..

Myself, Cam and 10 of our friends
headed to Les 2Alpes and then Alpe d'Huez for 2 weeks of Uplift Mountain Biking. This is my kind of sport - although it is still surprisingly energetic, it is biking without the uphill lung-busting slogs, (until you accidentally get onto a cross-country route instead of a downhill!)

Fast trails with lots of berms and braking bumps were the theme for the first week at Les 2 Alpes.
Berms, berms, berms

We saw lots of these from one of the lifts - a marmot (not to be confused with braking bumps)

The grading was harder than in some of the other biking areas we have been to (and in comparison to Alpe d'Huez) - a few of the red runs were really steep, and the black runs were gnarly!
Steeper berms on the reds
A steep, rocky black (not for me!)
In the 2nd week at Alpe d'Huez we found some slower switchback runs in the forest with roots and rocks (as well as a whole bunch of fire-track runs higher up the mountain, which they listed as 'red routes' - not good), and also a fun bike park which had something for everyone to learn stuff on

A little drop-off for me to practice on (I even managed to start landing both wheels together!)
A medium one for some of the others...
...and a big jump for Neil and Cam
Unfortunately we also had to do some pedalling in the Alpe D area as the trails didn't always flow well together, we also found ourselves on a cross-country route which was not to be recommended in full armour and downhill gear!

One of the downhill trails was the 'megavalanche' which starts at the glacier on top of the mountain, and descends right down to the bottom of the valley - we couldn't believe that the fastest people in the infamous megavalanche race completed it in around 45 minutes - it took us most of the day (although we did have several breaks, including at least 2 lunch stops and a cafe stop on the way!!)
It was a matter of seconds before I'd fallen over on the snow.

It was on the Wednesday of the second week that I landed awkwardly off a small rock drop-off and fell with my foot underneath my bike which severely twisted my ankle.... Between the initial thoughts of 'ouch that really hurts' and a latter 'ouch that is still really hurting' along with 'ow, ow, ow' came the thought 'how am I going to compete in a World Championships with a damaged ankle?' That thought kept cropping up over the next 2 days, whilst I rested my foot with a lot of ice and Ibuprofen gel and whilst my whole foot swelled up from above my ankle to my toes with bruising reminiscent of a Dulux paint colour chart (which complimented my purple nail varnish nicely). So, that was the end of my biking for the holiday. Thankfully by the time I got home the swelling started to subside a little
(This was 5 days later...)
and although it was still another week before I could walk without a funny hobble (especially going down stairs), I found I could manipulate my foot enough to get in my boat without it hurting - phew!
Here's a few more photos from the holiday:



How very lady-like!

Thanks to Andy L/Holly, Andy B and Cam for the photos.