All dressed up and nowhere to go (Alpine climbing)

Sunday 19 April 2009 05:08PM

Ben and I seem to have a jinx on ski races. This year the two previous races we entered both had to run on replacement courses owing to large quantities of snow in the preceding days making the original course too dangerous. This weekend’s Mezzalama race didn’t buck the trend, with snow all night and very heavy snow just before dawn. The difference this time was that the organisers waited until the last possible moment – when we were all stood on the start line – to announce that the race would be postponed for two weeks! I’d just downed a litre of energy drink and an energy gel so took the news relatively cheerily while competitors around me variously cried, swore and applauded the organisers’ decision. As Nick reflected afterwards “If you’d sent 1500 people up there today dressed in lycra you’d’ve been lucky to get half of them back”. It remains to be seen if we can reorganise a team to make it out here for round two with this historic race.