Verdon des Collines

We (Hubert, Seb and I) headed down to have a go at this competition at the end of the Verdon Gorge called Verdon des Collines. We deciede to opt for the 55km route with 1250m of climbing.

It was a very badly organised race and we ended up catching up with the people that were out marking the course at about 1/4 of the way round the course at Esparron-de-Verdon. Somewhere near Quinson Hubert and Seb were about 100m anead of me and missed a turn. It took me a while to realise and I kept thinking that they would catch up soon as they are faster than me.

But then I got to a fork in the track at about 3/4 of the way round the track and there were no markings, another rider came along and we decided to try the right fork. After about a kilometer of no markings we met someone who had done the same thing coming back up the hill so we turned round and met some other riders who had made the same descision, when we got back to the fork there was a nice flourescent arrow on the ground showing us which way to go!!! So off we all went on the left fork having wasted plenty of time and energy.

The first 3/4 of the race was pretty numbingly boring being mostly along forestry track. The final 1/4 however was fantastic with great technical singletrack both up and down. I shame to make us do all that boring work just for a short bit of singletrack though.

I have just downloaded my GPS tracklog and what was supposed to be a 55km race with 1250m of climbing was actually 73.3km with 2027m of climbing. They need to get their figures right next time. EVen taking out the two mistakes due to non existant way markings it would have been 70km with 1939m of climbing. Muppets.