andygates

It's been a busy time.  Not exactly a training camp, unless the training was for the Olympic Quaffing, but definitely very active and very good fun.

Saturday we arrived - xeeny, fialta, jonnycowbells and I - via sleeper from Paris, and a foretaste of the Plan was revealed when I assembled the bike and, after the others headed up in the bus, I deleted all my waypoints.  "Cock," say I, followed by "un pain au chocolat et un espress?"  The ride up from Bourg to Tignes - 30km, 1350m of climb, and while spectacular and stunning, was basically just a dogged three-hour grovel the whole way up.  Wasn't til we bussed down again that I really grokked how far it was - you don't look behind you while climbing and your idea of "level" gets reset without a horizon.  skean was delayed and didn't ride up :(

Sunday was a recce: we hiked over to Val d'Isere, all Alpine meadows and loveliness, with the Alps doing their "look at me!" thing.  Biggles was practising landings on a tiny mowed-grass strip.  I got a touch of the sun, and wimped back in a cab with jonnycowbells while the others hiked back over.  Val d'Isere is one of those posh ski resorts that just drips money.  Tignes has a more backpackery feel, but both are fundamentally resort towns.

Monday and it's a morning run round the lake (wheeze wheeze, I blame the altitude) before some downhill mountain biking.  You'd think that a "green run" for DH would be wide swooping, easy stuff?  Ha.  Ha.  Ha.  And ha again.  This route, called "easyride", was a 5km demented plummet full of gutters and bermy switchbacks over signs saying, helpfully, "Danger" (as if the precipice wasn't clue enough).  And then the lightning came on.  By the time I'd gone from yelling "I trust you!" to the bike to singing "**** it, in a bucket, one last time" to the tune of "Take it to the limit" I was actually quite enjoying it - good-scary, not bad-scary.  skean was loving it and went off up into the clouds once they restarted the lifts; the others were less enamoured. 

It's at this point that we discover a difference between bike sports and gravity sports; I like being the engine.  skean likes the gravity mode of "engine always on".  When it comes to sliding, he can keep it, but DH MTB might be a crossover that I will play with some more.  The rented DH bikes were incredible.  Great wallowy bump-eaters.  Dogs to pedal, but that's what the ski-lift was for.  ;)

Come Tuesday and we were all suffering.  Felt as if we'd been in a fight - all those little stabiliser muscles that had kept us (mostly) upright on the bikes were sore.  So, off to the pool for a swim and sauna.  Now, the pool was full of Holiday Fun so that plus the altitude meant we each did half a dozen lengths before heading into the sauna.  The altitude is funny.  We were all feeling like we'd been Kryptonited or vaguely post-viral.

The sauna was terra incognita for Yours Truly - it's not very British and it's the sort of body-squeamish place I just avoid.  I soon fell in love with it. There were various saunas and jacuzzis, and in the middle, 'fun showers'.  The star shower was a bucket on a chain, that just dumped cold water on you.  So it was steamy sauna - bukkit - medium sauna - bukkit - hot sauna - bukkit!  And so on.  I wuv my bukkit.  The view - bikini-clad girls and a Paris rugby team - was pretty good too.  As were the mountains outside the windows...  I came out of the sauna well impressed with how good I felt so they'll be going onto my "treats" list :)

Wednesday was quiet - a late hungover start (ahem) meant we just biked down to Val d'Isere and back.  The climb is a lot better when you don't have to do the rest of it. 

Thursday would brook no late starts (xeeny and fialta having been up early to run each morning, they slept in) - we were off for the morning's snowboarding on the glacier.  In a nutshell, jonnycowbells and skean have skillz.  Me?  I suck chunky ibex vomit through a flugelstraw.  Lessons!  I need lessons!  We met up with the others at the head of the funicular, everyone got to grockle at the (admittedly stunning) view, hot chocolate was consumed and down we went for some Extreme Pedalo Racing (tip: head across the lake and raid a bar for beer) before a restauraunt evening and some aprés. 

Friday was mostly packing and winding down for the sleeper back to Paris and parts West. 

Pad the quiet parts of the week with good food, good beer, great bread, good company, the world set to rights to the tune of clinking glases and Wii games, and the gratuitous splendour of the Alps looking like the gods' own mine tailings, and all in all you get a splendid week. 

Now I'm going to sleep for a week to recover.