Unlikely Prisojnik ⛷️

Gear test (fail)

Afternoon Ride

Key to good skiing are low expectations

Alpine day with momma 💃  💃

Long caption but it was an equally long day. 

Leave it to the Frenchman to completely downplay the difficulty of this race 😅 But it’s a good thing maybe because I never would have signed up for this “really not that technical, mostly all rideable” bike race that I barely finished after surviving all the rocky descends, exposed traverses, too steep to ride climbs, and 6 hours of freezing downpour. Maybe one of the hardest things I’ve done. 

When I was looking at past results there have been 0-1 female finishers and I just assumed that few signed up. Turns out, it’s really really hard to make the cutoffs and they don’t actually publish all the racers that DNFed. It was my first time actually chasing cut offs with the last one an 1h10 and 900m away. I think there’s a special kind of hurt associated with that; when I’m struggling in a race I just slow down, but here slowing down would have meant 12 hours of really hard work without a note I’ve been there, and then I would have to come do it again so I was having none of that 😂

Beautiful but chilly morning with zero degrees at the pass, then a kamikaze descend with French men flying on all sides of me. I consider myself a fairly capable rider but today I felt like a snail in comparison. Super stunning first loop with glaciers, jagged peaks, lakes, and red hints of fall on the grasslands. (Second loop was probably equally beautiful but we got clouded out).

When I finally warmed up enough to shed the morning layers and feel my toes again rain came, and since it was zero chance of that in the forecast even on Thursday when I left my rain layers were symbolic in nature, as was my feeling of warmth for the second half of the race. 200m above us was snowing, so it was really nice being soaked through on descends 😂 I almost never ride wet trails because I’m too scared of falling so those 3000m of descend was a crash course in mud riding. Would like to say I aced it by the end but by then neither my brakes nor my fingers were still working and I had no interest in a mudslide on the edge of a cliff. Too bad shoes weren’t gripping either 😂😂

When I ate shit for the first time I considered quitting. I was cold, it was unfun, and I was scared of getting injured. But as I was wheels up on the ground this dude came flying past singing to himself so I figured I’d first try changing my attitude. I never got to singing to myself level but I did actually quite enjoy mudsplashing once I convinced myself I will eventually feel warm again. 

I generally do believe that instead of cutoffs getting slower, I should just get faster. But, it seems that historically at this race very few if any women manage to finish the one day version. If I knew it was going to be this tight I also would have reconsidered signing up for this distance in the first place. But, every year 70ish+ guys do finish, and it does seem to me that it’s not really a level playing field in terms of opportunity for success. I do think it would make sense to start women earlier, or shorten the course a bit to make cut offs more doable. I have not specifically trained for this race, but I did feel good and am bike fit, and capable of descending at a reasonable speed. I just think it would be cool to have a larger female field and “you probably won’t finish this” doesn’t really foster that. 

All in all a very memorable day and very proud of having finished today, 8 minutes before the course closed. It was really really really hard.

⛰️ Col du Lautaret (2,058 m) • ⛰️ Col du Galibier (2,642 m) • ⛰️ Col des Rochilles (2,496 m) • ⛰️ Col des Cerces (2,574 m) • ⛰️ Col de la Ponsonnière (2,613 m) • ⛰️ Col Nazié (1,902 m) • ⛰️ Col Saint-Georges (2,237 m) • ⛰️ Col du Souchet (2,365 m) | 🌐 summitbag.com

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Unlikely Prisojnik ⛷️

Gear test (fail)

Afternoon Ride

Key to good skiing are low expectations

Alpine day with momma 💃 💃

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