La Transjurassienne

February 20, 2006

La Transjurassienne (nickname used by the French : Transju) is the one which has the richest offer amongst all Worldloppet races : three different Gold Master races and one Silver race, all in one week-end. At a nice reception of WL skiers at Les Rousses, we were welcomed by the head of Transju Jean-Claude Dalloz and the mayors of the main villages of the area, and had the opportunity to meet skiers from different parts of the world. An account of the different races follows.

Transju’Classic

Transju’Classic is a new 50 km classic race starting at Les Rousses and finishing at Mouthe, i.e. the last 50 km of La Transjurassienne. It took place on Saturday February 11. The weather was sunny and the temperature -10°C at the start, warming up a little bit during the day. Some 10 cm of new snow had fallen on the two previous days and that made the race much more challenging in spite of excellent tracks. It is possible that the real length was around 53 km, judging from the fact that skiers at an estimated speed of 12 km/h needed 1h 10 min to reach the 10 km point. The course includes the famous climb to the Risoux mountain and there are smaller climbs all along the way; in fact nobody seems to remember having seen any flat sections. No wonder that many skiers from nordic countries considered the race to be rather challenging.

374 skiers finished the race. This is a promising number for the first year of this new race. It seems that skiers from nordic countries have not yet realized that Transju has a classic Gold race. We can expect a notable growth as soon as the news spread.

This time we will give the results of the three IAWLS Executive Committee members who participated in Transju’Classic.

The winner’s time was 2.59.06. Each competitor can evaluate his/her performance by calculating the time ratio, skier’s time / winner’s time.

La Transjurassienne 76 km FT

The traditional Transju took place on Sunday February 12. At the start in Lamoura the thermometer showed -22°C. Fortunately, there was no wind and after the first third of the race the sun warmed up the air. Not really the snow, and the glide on the fine cold snow was far from perfect. Many citizen skiers needed one hour more than usually to complete the race. In the famous climb to the Risoux mountain at around mid-race long lines formed and the forward movement stopped intermittently. In the steepest sections of that climb citizen skiers are unable to skate. They are herringboning in two parallel lines and the slow speed does not allow for a sufficiently high flow in terms of number of skiers per minute. This could be avoided by extending the duration of the starts in order to create a natural elongation of the field. But maybe the majority of the citizen skiers appreciated the rests provided by these small bottle-necks. The winner’s time was 3.17.35. This is not very much above the average winning time which shows that elite skiers have expert waxing teams at their disposal able to circumvent the glide problem we mentioned. 2622 skiers finished the race.

La Transjurassienne 54 km FT

This race took place in parallel with the 76 km race. It started at Les Rousses and joined soon the course of the longer race. The winner’s time was 2.34.41and 715 skiers finished the race.

La Minitrans 25 km FT

This is the Silver Master race. It took place on Saturday February 11, starting at 14.30 at Chapelle des Bois and finishing at Mouthe. After a tour in the fields of Chapelle des Bois the track joined the Transju track at 22 km from finish. 393 skiers finished the race. This is by no means an easy race for those who concentrate on the Silver races. There are a lot of climbs and a vertiginous descent at 10 km from the finish. In comparison, for example the Vasaloppet 30 km race called Kortvasan is a children's game. Minitrans may be compared with the difficulty of the 22 km Lavazèloppet. The winner’s time was 1.06.08.

To summarize: skiers who wished to ski one race at Transju had four choices: on Saturday the 25 km FT Silver race or the 50 km CT Gold race, on Sunday the 54 km FT Gold race or the 76 km FT Gold race. For the most assiduous WL skiers who wished to ski on both days there were four options: the 25 km FT Silver race or the 50 km CT Gold race on Saturday plus the 54 km FT Gold race or the 76 km FT Gold race on Sunday!

This page was last revised on September 16, 2007