Ornans - Championships du Monde du VTT





Worlds START LIST and PREVIEW

 

 

Ornans is a pretty typical French small town with a little bit of art influence and emphasis on their river, which is known for it’s trout.  Of course they also have a big mountain bike race that they’ve been hosting annually since 1999.  Noah and I made it here Wednesday afternoon and pretty easily found our apartment.  The owner Caroline is a great host and we really lucked out with the nicest apartment in town, even if it is a little small.
After a mandatory trip to the grocery store and a ham and cheese sandwich, it was time to unpack the bags and get ready for a ride.  Of course we’re on the 3^rd floor of a 200 year old building and the last set of wood stairs are more like a ladder than a staircase. 

Anyway, we easily found the course and headed out for a few kilometers of flat gravel path.  After those few Ks the easy European roadie course comes to an end.  From there the course turns into lots of rocky jeep road climbing, a few real muddy trails in the woods, and of course some prerequisite cow pasture crossings.  It’s tough terrain and anywhere the course isn’t rocky it is really soft and slow going.  It took 3 solid hours to go about 25 miles of the 52 mile course.  Probably only 5 of the 25 miles were actual mountain bike “trails” by US standards, but the riding is still plenty hard.  There is some pretty cool scenery to take in as the course winds it’s way up one side of the Loue valley and then works it’s way back on the other.  1,000ft rock cliffs looking over the green valley and small French towns makes for a pretty cool backdrop. 

Thursday was raining all day so I just chilled and rested up.  Today was an easy ride on the 15k of the course which had some roads, cow pastures (with cows and fresh manure) and some fairly cool trail sections.  It's pretty different from the terrain at home, but it's still pedaling and I feel good about Sunday.  It will be a tough day on the bike for sure, and the variety of the course suits me a lot better than some of the more road oriented marathon courses in Europe.  Tomorrow the real excitement begins with another ride, registration, team managers meeting, and a couple thousand amateur riders getting to town.