[Closed] Scare me. What's the "hardest" bit about the MegaAvalanche?

Getting through to race day uninjured 🙂
0/2 on that score

Edit...
There was nothing harder than you can find in the UK when I did it, the riding around is good rocky stuff and good forest. Being able to pedal and stay on your game for the distance is tough so being used to riding hard for an hour is useful. The fitter and stronger you are the easier the back end becomes.

Qualifying:
- First 4 corners, nothing technical, just everyone fighting for position
- Rock slab section to the first fire road is carnage (see above)
- Section of track after the 2nd DMC lift station is fast with a few dropoffs, rock gardens and tight turns.

Main Race:
-Riding on the glacier.
-Boulder field after the glacier, line choice is key.
-There is a rock chute which is a bit of a challenge, good line choice makes it easier.
-Descent through the trees after the climb, in the dry its bloody quick. In the wet it will be a challenge staying upright.

There is nothing that steep there, just sections where there are no features to slow for.

-Fit dual ply tyres
-Run tubeless, double tape your rims, decent pressures
-Body armour, kevlar palmed gloves (those rocks are sharp)

Practice, practice, practice!!!! From memory we were doing 2 2/3 runs of the quali track a day (Top to DMC), with a glacier to DMC run as well, did 3 full runs of the mega course during the week and a couple of full runs of the quali track on Thursday after they'd taped it.

The state of the portaloo at the top on race day 😉

[img] [/img]

For me, it was just straight-up tiring, and that made it sketchy. I took quite a bit of damage falling repeatedly on the glacier, that led to a phase of hanging on grimly trying not to die in the boulder field and by the time I got down to the tree-line I was getting quite seriously weary. Keeping concentration and avoiding errors was a real struggle. 🙂

The cost of replacement parts on the ADH LBSs take a lot of spares.

Make sure brakes, forks, bearings, bushings are good order before leaving, dual ply tyres.
Arm pump.

Mostly enjoy the riding, the race is quite chaotic and you could be on the perfect run and someone could clatter into you from any angle and ruin your race, so don't take it too serious!

I haven't done it but a friend has numerous times, his top tip is go fast as hell at the start.

I found the only scary bit to be the quali, specifically the section immediately below the DMC lift.
First time I did the Mega, we arrived mid-day so just went up DMC and rode quali course from there. Flew headlong into that initial section with rocky drops and got through it more by luck than anything else. Pulled over below it to regroup and thought "I can't sustain a solid hour at this technical difficulty, at race pace!".
Found out next day though that everything else is more like a standard XC ride in the Lakes.

Main race has very little in the way of technical stuff on it at all. The danger is other people.

I found the fatigue to be the worst thing. Nothing too bad on the track while ridden in isolation but the race itself is like having a fight. You'll be blowing out your arse after the first couple of minutes.

Don't hang on to tight on the snow. You will probably fall off and it's not the worst thing ever. All those soaking wet, freezing clothes will keep you cool lower down.

Take DH tyres, mech hangers, spokes etc...

Some cracking advice above, and I agree it's fatigue that's the enemy. I had one OTB just cos I couldn't hang on through a rough section that I would have easily ridden out normally.

Pace yourself, main race will be 1hr+ for mere mortals.

And enjoy it 😀

It's mainly just how tiring it is, I seem to remember not much that was tougher than the techier stuff in the Lakes but we're really not used to descending on it for that long - there was a few steep rocky roll-ins that were quite high/intimidating and some steep switchbacks lower down that I found tricky when knackered.

Fitness and arm pump were the main difficulty for me.

Fitness. Being able to sustain a quick pace, for 30-40 mins in quali and an hour in the race.
There was no one thing that was particularly hard (with the exception of the initial race start on snow) and being fit enough to peddle on the flat and up hill at the mid point of the race will see you make up more places than smashing past people in the rock gardens, and being off the track.
For the race start, the hill has a camber to the left and loads end up drifting in the that side and piling up. Better to really try heading right, at which point you'll drift left a bit but only to centre.

+1 for fitness & staying uninjured

Do you do XC racing? I think that'd be better training than racing enduros, as long as you're a competent rider anyway.

My race didn't go to plan, unfortunately...
http://unduro.co.uk/mtb/that-time-i-raced-the-megavalanche-and-got-a-free-helicopter-ride/

chakaping read your account, nice one - someone really grabbed your handlebars and yanked them sideways? 😯

Scare me. What's the "hardest" bit about the MegaAvalanche?

Needing a sh*t at the top of Pic Blanc on raceday morning? The toilet is 'interesting'.

Nothing hard on the tracks any more, they have been tamed down over the years. The start of the main race in the snow is a total sh*t show. When you inevitably crash, the only thing you need to remember is never let go of the bike.

The scariest bit for me was being on the second row for the main race, somehow staying upright down the first chute, down the ski run & then down the steep bit to the glacier - I found myself up near the front - the really quick guys were coming past me at 70-80kph (I was doing half that & thought I was doing well) totally out of control. I had some very near misses. There are massive, massive crashes at that point.

The bit after the the climb out of ADH is very, very fast too, which is interesting with blurry vision from the climb.

Yep Grum.

Needing a sh*t at the top of Pic Blanc on raceday morning? The toilet is 'interesting'.

Top tip - Pack some bog roll for race day. I used the bog round the back of the halfway lift station FWIW.

most technical bit I found was the boulder field after the snow. Some tricky drops there, and you're not quite in the zone yet.

Other than that the endurance part is important if you aren't that race/road fit.

Best bit is through the woods towards the end.

The hardest bit is facing the toilet for your prerace dump at the restaurant at the top. That's by far the bleakest thing I've ever seen.

That first video chakaping posted in his blog is brilliant.
Thought about doing the mega years ago, but too old and fragile now, still find it utterly fascinating!

The hardest part is not losing your temper with the middle-aged wide-boys behind you at the first bottleneck, screaming at everyone else to move or hurry up, as if they're going for the win. It's a bloody bottleneck, there is nowhere else to go and no-one is getting anywhere fast right now. If you were really that fast you wouldn't be in the bottleneck with the rest of us!
They're the same kind of assholes you find in Morzine who think they're rock stars just because they can go fast on Pleney (*hint* anyone can go fast on Pleney - it ain't difficult)

As you can see, I'm still a little miffed about that particular experience I had at the mega...

Could have been worse, mind. A buddy of mine got stuck behind a Frenchman in the lower section who kept getting off his bike and running every time he came to a steep switchback!

Those negatives aside, I really enjoyed the mega. You'll have a great time, but just remember not to take it too seriously!

yeah it's not so much a 'race' as a line of traffic at rush hour. Wherever you are after the snow (main race or qualy) is pretty much where you finish. I really enjoyed the course and the experience but the 'race' itself is flawed, and one of the reasons why I probably won't do it again.

The hardest part is not losing your temper with the middle-aged wide-boys behind you at the first bottleneck, screaming at everyone else to move or hurry up, as if they're going for the win. It's a bloody bottleneck, there is nowhere else to go and no-one is getting anywhere fast right now.

Three things I'd add,
1. 'Elbowtastic' foreigners - generally french, who seem to think trying to ram their elbow in your ear when attempting a pass is the done thing.
2. Riders trying to 'cut in pass' at the switchbacks when there is zero room to do so but they go for the gap that doesn't exist anyway.
3. Dust - in 2011 after weeks with very little rain, the wooded section was almost impossible to breath & see after a few dozen riders had been through let alone a few hundred.

If you want to try for the main race focus on the qualies, get stuck in and push hard. Get as fit as you can. Don't dawdle and queue, have some urgency..
Most importantly enjoy it. It is blooming good fun!

Spelling it? 😆

I see your 2011 and raise you 2014

Absolutely brutal hour of dragging my bike through hellish mud

had to have my eyes washe dout in the medical tent because they were filled with grit riding the last 1/4 of the track one eyed

worst of all I was foolish enough to stick to the actual route, most riders curt kilometers off the route !

Absolutely brutal hour of dragging my bike through hellish mud

This.

This was the year that broke me. I've never been back.

worst of all I was foolish enough to stick to the actual route, most riders curt kilometers off the route !

Yep, once over the climb & along the initial traverse, as soon as it went into the woods, people were walking, carrying their bikes on their backs. The mud, which was like thick clay was a foot deep.

I went off the side of the track & straight down the hill at that point.

I went off the side of the track & straight down the hill at that point.

Cheater!