Enduro Des Nations in Vars, France
Just got hm from a week in France with Mark Weir and Jason Moeschler where we competed in the Enduro Des Nations DH race in Vars France. This was Jason & my first go at one of these events, Mark was the only one on our team with previous experience.
The courses were pretty crazy, usually steep, demanding, and about 15min long, so after 6 race runs in the first day we were all feeling sore. The French team was killing it, winning pretty much every race, but they did have home court advantage, knowing lines that we had no idea about. The thing with these races is there is no practice, so if you have some knowledge of the course or you can manage to walk them, which takes a lot of time, you have a big advantage. Regardless the USA team was holding there own in 2nd and on the last stage of Saturday I managed to take a win, the only one for the weekend that was won by another country aside from France. Of course this was a track that our team walked from start to finish on Friday, so we knew where we were going for one. This was also the shortest of the courses we raced at about 7minutes long, still happy to get one victory. I think it showed that if others know the courses as well as the French, they can be beat. This course was also the only one that was almost entire taped off from start to finish, making for short cuts difficult. On some of the longer runs it is near impossible for the organizers to tape the entire course, so if you are sneaky and walk the entire course, you can find lines that save lots of time. I specifically found this out in the final race of the weekend which is a mass start event, when Absalon was in first ahead of Rene & myself and he cut straight through a grassy field, saving probably 10 seconds from the route most racers were taking. With lines like this it was easy to see how we could be 10, 20, or 30 seconds behind the French in some runs.
Anyway, in the end we finished 2nd as a team and it was a good experience and a hell of a work out. Thanks to Weir for putting the team together with Jason and I, thanks to our mechanic Joe (owner of the bikeco.com), thanks to Lisa (jasons girlfriend for all her cooking & assistance) and thanks to Fred and his team at Tribe Sports Group for inviting us over and putting on a fun event.
Posted by Brian on July 28, 2009 9:38 AM