2006 Maxxis 12 Hours of Pont de Vaux, France

2006 marks the 20th anniversary of one of the most prestigious ATV races of all time, the 12 Hours of Pont de Vaux in southern France.

My third trip to the Pont de Vaux started with a short "vacation" at the Alpe d'Huez resort in Southern France, about 2 hours South of the track. I prefer to head over early to get adjusted to the 6 hour time difference before the race weekend starts.

The Alpe d'Huez area is a road and mountain biker's dream. You can rent a full suspension, disc brake equipped downhill mountain bike for a couple bucks a day and just thrash all through the mountains on perfectly kept single track.

A series of three lifts will take you all the way to the top of Le Pic Blanc, which has a height of 3,330 meters. You can take your mountain bike with you on the lift and ride down to the resort from the top, but you had better pack a lunch and some signal flares!

And when you get done beating yourself up in the mountains, you can go for a nice road ride up the most notorious climb of the Tour de France. It's nine miles of pure pain and suffering at a unrelenting grade of 8 to 10%. This year it only took me 1 1/2 hours (Lance Armstrong did it in 37 minutes!). I use this as my last workout before the race.

Now off to the track to get a look at the course and get the quad ready to go.

The track stays the same each year, with the weather creating the only changes in the track surface. This is the track covered with grass before the racing started.

This is the two-way tunnel jump which is barely wide enough for two quads to fit side by side. There are only six jumps total on the whole track, and these are two of them.

This is a view of the two big tabletops in the back section that runs through the corn fields. These have got to be about 40' wide.

Here is the hairpin turn at the end of the longest straightaway on the track, which runs along side of the 120 pit spots. To give you an idea of the length, we ran 16-36T gearing on our 450r! A KTM950 hybrid quad was clocked at 180 km/hr at the end of the straight. The key is to find a braking point marker at the spot where you need to start slowing down to be able to make the turn, and hit the same spot every lap.