Blog
Xterra France - Europe's biggest
10th Jul 2015
A bucket-list Xterra; The biggest - and arguably toughest - on the European circuit, in both course and competition!
Xterra France has a legendary reputation – the longest, hardest bike course (40km of hills), the most participants, the best design for spectators - with multiple laps through an arena with the famous north-shore ramps. It all makes for an awesome and “big event” atmosphere. You can tell that this race is the pride and joy of organiser Paul and his team!
I had always wanted to do Xterra France one day as it sounded like an amazing atmosphere and experience. Not necessarily this year – as my mountain biking is still work in progress, and this course is all about the bike! But when the opportunity came up, this seemed a poor reason to turn it down, just because the course doesn’t suit my strengths. Maybe I would do better than expected!
Again, I had not had the best preparation for the race. Travelling directly from Xterra Switzerland, we’d been sleeping in a tent for 9 days now, in the middle of a European heatwave. I’ve realised the one modern convenience I struggle to live without is a fridge-freezer! Just to have a cold drink before / during / after any training would be amazing. Warm electrolyte is bad enough, but recovery shakes served at 34°C… yuk! It was difficult to eat my normal diet too, when fruit, veg, dairy etc can’t be stored. Butter and cheese melted all over our food bag within a few hours, and strawberries turned to a mouldy pulp within a day. Upsetting!
Likewise it’s difficult to follow normal pre-race routines. It’s too hot to nap in the tent during the day, and often too hot to sleep at night – Belgian Pro Yeray commented that I was probably the only pro staying in a tent! Then there were the bugs – I seemed to be their favourite snack; constantly being bitten by insects. First world problems, I know, but just not ideal for getting ready to race. We had booked a hotel on race night to try and get at least one good sleep. It was soooo nice not to have to walk 200m across a field in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, and then realise you’d forgotten any loo roll! But no mini-bar (i.e. still no fridge), and the room was possibly even hotter than camping! I had to get up a couple of times in the night to run my head under the cold tap!
So on race day, with another 34° forecast and 2pm start, the biggest concern was most definitely temperature rather than terrain! Anyone that knows me knows I am not a fan of racing in heat… Thankfully wetsuits were banned as the water was 24°, but I have never done a swim like this in my life! 1,000 athletes in one mass start - the true “washing machine” experience! It was pretty frustrating, the constant kicking and hitting by other athletes, never being able to move into space, getting stuck behind people who slowed down. But with such a long race ahead, the best thing to do is conserve energy, and not worry about the 1 minute you are wasting.
The ladies positions after swim were completely different from normal - just shows the effect big crowds can have, and often your luck with the position you started in! Lots of ladies commented it would be much fairer to have a separate women’s race, but that’s not the way it is.
Onto the bike, I started conservatively – planning to take it easy for one lap and push harder on the second. Lap 1 went to plan and it was great fun jumping and swooping round the wooden ramps to the cheers of the crowd! I felt as good as could be expected by the ½ way aid station, but that is where I made my biggest mistake. I was pretty hot, so I took a bottle of water and tipped most of it over my head. A few hundred metres down the road, I then realised I had nothing to drink for the next 40 minutes of climbing. And that is where the problems began.
Partly it’s psychological but it’s also definitely physical and I started massively overheating and dehydrating. I felt dizzy, un-coordinated, and you reach the point where you’re so hot you feel cold. You know it’s a bad situation when you’re looking at all the discarded bottles by the side of the trail to see if one has some water! (I didn’t find any). At least the trail wasn’t so congested this time; the limiting factor up the climbs was my own power (or lack of), not the crowds of men who elbow their way past, then mess up a technical climb, fall off, get in your way, and make you walk as well!
The aid station at the top of the climb couldn’t come soon enough. I stopped altogether, tipped a whole bottle over my head, drank another, and took a third one with me. I felt better pretty quickly, but the damage had been done. Both in time already lost, and in my core temp overheating - it would be hard to recover for the run. Nevertheless, I was looking forward to getting off my bike when I finally reached transition after 3 hours in the saddle!
The run was a nice course, but my legs and mind were too tired for something this technical! I somehow managed to overtake a lot of people, but I was too far behind most Pro girls off the bike to make any difference. Even despite all the encouragement from Aloha teammates and friends! I finished in 12th place - which was pretty disappointing even for my moderate expectations. I have never been outside the top 10 before, but as my teammate Karin says – ‘you win some, you learn from some’! Through the whole race I had been expecting Karin to pass me, but learned afterwards she had a bike mechanical and sadly wasn’t able to finish.
Hopefully we both got our bad races out of the way here, and saving the good performances for European Champs in 2 weeks’ time! Bring it on :-D
Design © 2024 Louise Fox. Photography © Lukasz Warzecha