"It is 4:45 on Wednesday morning and we are just getting ready to mountain bike for around 11 hours today. We're starting at 6am and are just having breakfast.
Monday evening's prologue trail race was great. Anna got 1st, Chez 3rd and me 6th. All of us were ahead of our competition which gave us a great start. It was a really good course, steep up bit of flat and then steep down, about 10km or so.
Yesterday was an amazing day. We went up to 3800m on the Mont Blanc Massif. The weather was awesome, shame I can't say the same about my performance at altitude! I suffered a fair bit... We climbed along an amazing rock ridge to reach our summit (sorry can't remember the name) and then descended down a glacier. Salomon Crested Butte (our main opposition) got ahead on the ridge but we caught them running off the hill and finished a few minutes ahead of them.
Last night's trail race was a bit cruel. Only 6km but mostly steep downhill. After a long day climbing and running up high with big heavy packs it was painful on the legs! Anna got 1st, Chez 2nd and me 4th and we got 4th team overall, keeping our lead in the women's race.
Saab Salomon (Ben Bardsley, Tom Owens and Andy Symonds) won yesterday's stage and wrestled the overall lead and yellow jersey from American team Nike Beaver Creek, great going!!!"
Heather Dawe
Wednesday 23rd July 2008
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