Tuesday, 18 March 2008

Pierra Menta 2008

The first thing I have to say about the Pierra Menta is thank god its over!
The second is I can't wait to do it again!
It was gruelling, a lot harder than both Jane and I expected, not that we ever thought it was going to be easy. I will try to recap each day as best I can, but there were times I was hurting so much, I think they have been erased from my memory.......
We arrived in Areches-Beaufort on Wednesday and were greeted with heavy rain! We checked our gear, attended the pre race meeting and moved into the house that was to be home for the next 4 days. It was pretty nice, with plenty of room for Thomas, Fabian, Jane and I. It over looked the start/finish area and was a stones throw away from Florent Pierra's home.

The view from our place, with the start and finish area in the valley floor

On the 1st day Thomas and I finished in 40th place, which wasn't bad out of the 164 teams. It was about a 2500m day. The 2nd ski was on rock hard, rain runnels, corrugated iron, which zapped all the strength out of my legs, but it wasn't until the 3rd ski were I really felt it. On the final climb the sun was out and it was really heating up, which just crushed me.

Jane and Fabian were happy with there race and finished 13th out of 21 women's teams.

The 2nd day was the biggest, about 2900meters of vertical! It was also really long, with a lot of flat ridge travel and long flat skinning sections. It also included a crazy down climb in the forest were there wasn't enough snow and a long skating section. It was really hot this day and a lot of teams had a tough day, like the Austrian/Swiss team that was 7th on the 1st day and blew up and finished 37th on the 2nd day! I was having a hard time as well, but Thomas was going strong. Surprisingly we passed a few teams on the skate and Thomas when out hard on the final climb, which was up a steep slope that had something like 80 kick turns on it! There was only 1 track broken so we were luck to have had a good position on this climb. The end was really flat and just went on and on, and the sun was at full blast. I was putting snow down my chest, back and under my helmet trying to cool off. I had also run out of water, so didn't think twice when I seen a friend with a big bottle of water. It was a hard day, but we were really happy when we found out we finished in 30th! This put us 37th over all.

Jane and Fabian were having a pretty rough day. At the top of one of the many boot pack sections on the long ridge Fabian lost her ski! It went flying off the ridge, but they were luck that a spectator when looking for it. It did take a good 30mins for the nice fellow to retrieve the ski, by which time Jane had gotten cold and found it hard to get going again. In the end they missed the cut off by about 5mins, which sadly meant there Pierra Menta was over.

The 3rd day was the famous Grand Mount day. Its amazing! the course is very impressive, with a huge climb up a arete that tops out on the Grand Mount, were a 100's of spectators are waiting for you, all going crazy! The noise on the Grand Mount is like nothing I have heard before, so many people, cow bells and horns in such a small place. The really impressive thing is that these people have all hike well over an hour to get to the top of the Grand Mount, some with BBQs! Most of the course this day is lined with people, but they were enough to pull me out of my slump, especially after I took a fall about 200m in to the race and landed really hard on the side of my butt. I was having cramping issues with my legs as it was, so this added to it. The 1st climb was 1200m. I don't think we have had a race in NZ that totals 1200m! On the final skin before the arete Thomas towed me which helped a great deal. In the end we finished 45th for the day and we in 40th over all.

Me on the 3rd day, thanks to Samuel for the photo!!

Getting out of bed for the final day was a struggle, but a later start, new snow and a shorted day all helped. Standing on the start line I wasn't really sure how long the race was as they had changed the course because of new snow, so I was pretty happy to find out at the bottom of the 2nd climb that it would be the last. I actually felt half good and when out hard on this climb, but it end the same as the rest and by the end I was cramping and moving slow. We finished the day in about 36th and that gave us a 39th position over all, not bad for our first Pierra Menta.

I hope to get some more photos up in the next few days. There are reports on skimo.org and results can be veiwed here.

1 comment:

nicnic38 said...

Waouh!

What a race you had...

4 days of ski, just thinking of ski... lucky guy!