I had never heard of Megavalanche but I guessed that it was something cool because when Macky saw the sign for Megavalanche Patagonia he almost jumped out of his pants with excitement. He spent awhile hopping up and down and babbling about glaciers and 7,000 foot changes in elevation until he remembered that neither of us have a long travel bike, a full face helmet or pads. This killed the mood for about half an hour until an email from the race organizer established that Megavalanche Patagonia isn’t quite like the real Megavalanche and “of course you can do it on an xc bike you don’t need a full face so glad you are coming to race it’s going to be awesome!!!!!!!” (Editor’s Note: This is a translation but the sentiment and punctuation of the original were preserved.)

And so it began.

Our day started at 5:30 AM with a four hour drive from El Bolsón where we had been spending a couple days racing and hanging out with friends. Naturally, things took longer than expected (okay, so we didn’t actually leave at 5:30) and we arrived at the race around 10 AM. Luckily the 10:30 start time was, as start time’s tend to be in Argentina, a figment of someone’s imagination. There was some fuss during registration as the race organizers had not anticipated any women showing up and there was no categoría de damas. They had no idea where to put me. My two options seemed to be the Elite or the Menores. I opted for the Elite, deciding I would rather take my chances against a bunch of guys with big bikes than stand on the start line with eight-year-olds.

The process of shuttling every one up the mountain for the practice lap began about an hour behind schedule. To our immense excitement, the shuttle vehicle turned out to be a dump truck. Everyone threw their bikes in unceremoniously and all the kids (and quite a few of Elite, myself included) tried to clamber in too. I mean, how many people can say they’ve ridden in the back of a dump truck? Sadly someone higher up decided this was unsafe so we all piled into the backs of various pick-up trucks instead, a much safer way of getting up a bouncy, curvy mountain road.

The practice lap was a good confidence boost. Everything was ride-able on the XC bike (some bits more comfortable than others, I’ll admit) and I only got passed by one of the aforementioned eight-year-olds. I didn’t get nervous until I was standing on the start line and at that point my nerves had a lot more to do with the Le Mans start than the actual course. It turns out that running and getting on my bike is something I need to work on.

The course had a lot of pedal-y sections as well as fast, smooth descents and some fun rocky bits. There were a couple of new sections which didn’t really have a line. It seems that the way they make trails here is to rope off a certain section and send a people down it on really big bikes until a trail appears. These bits were a little too steep and too rough to be fun on a bike with 120 mm of travel but the race was still a blast. Macky got 4th overall despite pulling his trademark missing-a-turn move and I beat somebody so we were both stoked.

The top ten guys got to go up the mountain again and do another final run. Unfortunately, Macky’s bad luck continued with a dropped chain, a crash and a flat tire. All of the other racers were super supportive and came over to assure me that “tu novio se cayó pero está entero” which translates literally to your boyfriend fell over but he’s still whole. This was not horribly comforting but as it turned out the bike had suffered the worst of the crash. In fact, Macky’s wounds pale in comparison to those I received while attempting to get on my bike. This is mildly embarrassing but I’m over it.