XTERRA France

Another week, another XTERRA - 1,500 m swim, 34 km bike and 10 km run so only 7km different in the mtb section, should be an easy day right?
Well, this proved to be a completely different setup to la Vallee du Joux one week ago. From the parking in the big meadow leading down to Lac de Longemer to the sound system playing music to the spectators watching the triathlon for kids and mini kids, it was clear this would be a bigger and noisier event.
With the larger number of starters, the swim was a more hectic place to be and there was no escape to the left or right, just a very wide bunch of seemingly slow swimmers around me. Again, the lake was not cold, but with my fear of people grabbing my legs from behind, it still sends me into hectic breathing and so breast stroke was required for a while before I could find any space in the water to swim freely. Even one guy doing back stroke to my left, must have been trying to stay afloat, or lost his goggles.
Nice out and back, so the navigation was quite simple for this one, but the target for the lake exit was very difficult to spot from the water as it was dark and buried in the trees.

So onto the bike, and after possibly 500m of road, we were offroad, the final time to see tarmac till the next lap. The trails were heavy mud/rock tracks, mostly beyond your normal firetrack. For the first lap, the problem was the sheer number of riders blocking the trails, resulting in a large amount of hiking as inevitably someone would slip/fall then others would have to stop. Very little flat, if any, and it felt like a long ride to the feeding station where I was very much in need of water/gels.

The most impressive part of the ride was a large wooden construction at the end of the lap in the spectator arena, don't know if this can be called "north shore" as its wide and straightforward to ride, but it looks big and must have taken a fair amount of work to put together.

The run was real trail work, my shoes are standard asics road shoes yet today they did not slip - I recommend trail shoes for this course though. Its up and up, narrow to the point of not being able to pass runners ahead, then the only flat section beside the lake to the finish is covered in roots and boulders. One of these sent me flying, luckily I landed on soft ground but certainly woke me up to concentrate on every foot step on this tricky terrain.

At the finish we were rewarded with a nice medal, tasty Kronenberg and then it was an attempt to shower, wash bikes and pack up between some immense storms which rapidly passed overhead.     

Swim : 33m 37s 715th
Bike : 3hr 16m 06s (After bike, 405th)
Run : 1hr 5min 2s
Total : 5hr 1min 12s
360th, +1hr 46m 32s behind winner.

So, only 7 km mtb more than Xterra Suisse, yet more than 2 hours extra in total!