It’s been a non-stop few weeks since I started work back in
France, and this is the first time I’ve actually had a day to stop and even
open up the computer to start typing!
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| Old ruins, springtime flowers, and one of my favourite Trans-Provence trails |
First up was a Press week for Juliana Bicycles ahead of the
launch of the Roubion, the bike I’ve been riding since Chile. Female
journalists from around the world, Juliana brand manager Katie Zaffke, Ambassadors
Anka Martin, Kathy Pruitt and myself, as well as Photographers Sven Martin and
Gary Perkin, and of course Mr Trans Provence, Ash Smith who organised the week,
all gathered near Roubion for a few days of riding the beautiful new bikes, on
classic Trans Provence terrain.
J
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| Kathy, me and Anka with some very pretty bikes ;) Photo: Sven Martin |
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| These bikes can even tow chariots don't ya know?! Photo: Gary Perkin |
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| Anka, Kathy and I shredding Grey Earth gullies Photo: Sven Martin |
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| Riding above Roubion Photo: Sven Martin |
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| Beautiful new Roubions on an alpine hillside |
It was a fantastic week of shredding the trails
with a great bunch of girls. Awesome riding, delicious food in lovely hotels,
lots of red wine fuelled games during the evening, and a good time had by all.
The week captured a little glimpse of what the spirit of the Juliana brand is
all about. Encouraging fun adventures on great bikes in incredible places, with
awesome people. I think everyone went away with the same impression I’ve had of
the bike…that it is totally rad and such good fun to ride.
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| Roubion Bike Park |
Of course there was always going to be one of the days
during that week that felt harder than the others. Thursday May the 22nd,
what would have been mine and Gareth’s 4th Wedding Anniversary. I
felt pretty close to tears at the slightest thing all day if I’m honest, but
somehow kept busy enough to hold them at bay for most of the day, guiding the
group down the trails into Roubion village, chatting to everyone about bikes
and the good food we enjoyed in the restaurant, amongst other things.
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| Riding down into Roubion on my Roubion! |
As places
to spend a wedding anniversary go, it was beautiful, but without Gareth, it
could only feel empty and remind me of how much I missed him and wished he was
there with me. In the afternoon, a huuuuge storm erupted above us, thunder and
lightning echoing around as we rode down an increasingly slippery trail, with
rain falling so heavily we were drenched completely. It was one of those times
where if the rain had been like that when you set off, you would never have
gone out, but once in it, the ridiculousness of how heavy it was had us all
giggling with how crazy it was to be out in such weather. On reaching the
bottom we learned that there’d been a landslide that had blocked the road,
meaning the second group had had to turn back before even getting to the start
of the trail, and we had a long diversion via another road to get back to the
hotel. The day had turned into the kind of adventure that Gareth would
definitely have approved of, and I couldn’t help but be cheered by that
thought. Still, it felt very strange to be having fun but not in the way I ever
would have expected, and without Gareth, the only other person to whom that day
was so significant.
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| Photos of an amazingly happy day... |
At the end of the Juliana week, it was straight into two
weeks TP guiding. The first was definitely a shock to the system, as I did all
the guiding that week due to Mary the other guide being new and never having
ridden the trails. Thankfully, despite feeling quite unfit, my level of fitness
was high enough that I at least was suffering less than the guests, and could
still remain full of encouragement and cheerfulness when they needed a bit of
motivation! J It has been so good to be
back on these trails, I never get tired of them, and despite the job being physically
exhausting, there is never really a bad day. When your office looks as amazing
as this how could there be?! The last few weeks have just reminded me that I do
indeed have the best job in the World.
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| Fernando from Columbia enjoying "Wild Wednesday" on the Trans-Provence guided week |
We were unlucky enough to get drenched in thunderstorms every
afternoon during the week, and one morning took twice as long as usual due to
the large amount of snow we had to carry our bikes across, kicking steps across
steep snow fields. It definitely felt more like mountaineering than riding! All
part of the adventure though and the guests loved it.
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| Lenny from Singapore negotiating one of many snowfields en route! |
The second week the sun shone brightly for us and the snow
had almost all melted on the trails. I could feel my bike fitness coming back,
and it was great that on my new bike I felt I could ride more smoothly and
confidently through sections I’d found tricky last year.
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| In guiding mode high above the Vesubie valley |
Straight after finishing the first 3 weeks of work, I headed
to Roubion (with my Juliana Roubion!) to race in an enduro. There were a few
faces I knew from guiding and other races and also some of the Roubion bike
park staff who’d helped out at the Juliana week. Lots of people commented, “Oh you’re
riding a Roubion!” which was awesome. This tiny village and the people in it
are super proud that a bike is named after the special place they live…it felt
great to take my bike to race there.
It was, like most French races, a crazy but brilliant affair.
Three special stages, groups of 10 starting together, no pre-practice, a chairlift
ride and short pushes for liasons, and straight into some hard riding!
The first stage was the longest, hardest stage I’ve ever
done in an enduro race! It started with a steep uphill grass slope to spread us
out. I pushed hard, knowing I needed to be near the front going into the
singletrack as there would be few places to pass people, and managed to settle
in behind the back wheel of Nadine Sapin (3 time winner of the TransVesubienne,
uber-fit, seems to float effortlessly uphills…). We were quite a bit ahead of the
other girls as we headed down into some swoopy grassy turns, before the trail
narrowed to tight singletrack. Despite shouting, Nadine would not let me past,
and it was too narrow to try and overtake, which unfortunately meant we were
moving slower than I wanted to. She would gain a few metres on me on the
climbs, before I gained them back on the descents. As the trail got steeper and
more technical I began to get frustrated at not being able to go faster, got
too close behind her as she stalled in the bottom of a compression, and then
having lost all my speed, had to get off and run up the short climb. By now
another girl Mary had caught us up, and as I was getting back on she came past
me, then promptly crashed in front of me, blocking the whole trail! We lost
sight of Nadine at that point, and yet again I found myself stuck behind
someone I wanted to ride faster than who wouldn’t let me past! I was missing
the normal style of Enduro races where everyone starts separately at minute
intervals!
I finally overtook her on a long
climbing section, my heart pounding and lungs burning with the effort, trying
to make up some of the ground we’d lost on Nadine. By this point we’d been
going for 15 minutes, and I was so tired that I missed a tight corner and rode
straight on into a field! In the time it took to get back up, Mary passed me, then
crashed again on the next corner! I tried to take a very steep tight inside
line on the switchback to ride past her, but it didn’t work and I crashed hard,
landing heavily on my hip and shoulder. I was so far into race mode though that
it didn’t really hurt, at least not at that moment!
Unfortunately I was stuck behind Mary
the rest of the way down, with nowhere to pass and me not feeling assertive
enough to try and overtake in case I just crashed in doing so again. As we
neared the bottom of the gorge we had been riding along the side of, Nadine was
in sight, but then the last section was a slippery, slime covered wooden plank
across a stream that you had to carry your bike over so the gap between us
opened up a bit. In the end Nadine was 18 seconds ahead of Mary, and I was 6
seconds behind her, after 39 minutes of racing!! My hands were hurting from
braking so much on the steep descent, my brain was frazzled from the
concentration required to negotiate the steep technical, loose switchbacks, and
stay focused on the narrow trail where a sheer drop of several hundred metres down
to the ravine below lurked, and I couldn’t talk I was so exhausted….all I could
do was collapse on the ground beside my bike whilst I tried to recover…It was
an amazing, scary and super hard trail to race down!
From there we were shuttled up in a coach to the base of the
chairlift again, before taking this and then another short push to the start of
the next stage. I sat in the sun with a beautiful view over alpine meadows to
the snow covered mountains in the distance, talking in French to some of the
other girls, and trying to relax before it was time to switch into race-mode
again. It was peaceful, calm and very hot, and to be honest I could quite
happily have just forgotten about racing for the rest of the day and stayed up
there for a snooze!
The news began to filter through that someone had fallen on
stage 1 and we were going to be a bit delayed, and shortly afterwards a
helicopter flew over in the direction of where stage 1 had been….never a good
sign. In the end we waited for 3 hours,
lying in the sun, enjoying the view, and feeling less and less like racing
again, but as stage 3 was now cancelled, it was going to be all or nothing on
stage 2.
This time it was flat
from the start, then into wide open grassy turns down across a big field before
entering the tight twisty singletrack. I’m not great at powering off the line, and with no hill to
slow the others down this time I was worried I was going to get stuck at the
back and frustrated again. However, I managed to get into 3rd place
going into the first corner, then took a tight inside line on the next two,
overtaking until I was in the lead. Once there I sprinted hard down the open
grassy slope, pedalling like mad, and a quick glance behind showed I’d opened
up a gap, exactly where I wanted to be so I wasn’t stuck behind anyone in the switchbacks.
I got to the first switchback to the left and tried to put in a pedal stroke to
get my right foot down for the turn…but the pedals wouldn’t turn. To my
absolute dismay I looked down and saw the chain had come off and was twisted
into a huge mess…presumably on the last bumpy section before the corner…merde. I
decided I had to keep going as everyone would catch me if I stopped to fix it, and
started praying it was downhill all the way. Two switchbacks later I was down….having
to keep my feet flat in the same position meant on tight left corners my inside
foot and pedal was hitting the inside corner and knocking me over, and they
were such tight turns that taking a wider line wasn’t an option. Mary and
Nadine came past me and there was nothing I could do…and then near the bottom
there was a flat rubbly section that you needed to pedal through, great. I got
off and ran, soon being passed by another girl, and ended up running for the
last 3-4 minutes which was flat and uphill across the line. It’s the only time
I’ve ever had a mechanical in a race so I guess my luck had to change sometime,
and I’d been convinced it was impossible to drop a chain with an XX1 drivetrain…so
I suppose it taught me a valuable lesson.
It meant I’d stay in third overall which I was a bit gutted about after
it had been going so well at the top and I’d got myself into the best possible
position to do well.
Still, it was only a race, and I’d entered it for a bit of
fun, to meet people, ride great trails, and share the race atmosphere, and
those boxes had definitely all been ticked! It was a great feeling to be on the
podium, where I received a big basket of fruit and local foods, and experienced
the scariest bit of the whole day, when I was interviewed on the podium in
French! I managed to say something which I think made sense, at least everyone
clapped politely anyway and liked my accent!
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| Big smiles after a fun day on the bike |
It’s hard to imagine anyone could not have had a good day when
mine had seemed so happy and fun, but on Monday morning, when checking the results
and split times online, some incredibly sad news came through. The racer who
had fallen on stage 1 had died of his injuries the previous evening in
hospital. Suddenly the bright sunny day that we’d had seemed very different.
The trails that we raced on were steep, technical and dangerous, with plenty of
sections where a crash could see you falling into the canyon below…that’s part
of racing and what made them so exciting and exhilarating, but in this case,
that appears to be what happened, with tragic consequences.
The very nature of accidents is that they are unpredictable
and unexpected, there is no way the rider or his family or friends could have
known when they awoke that sunny morning, that life was going to change in a way they
could never have imagined…That's what makes them so hard to understand. The sad news inevitably brought back memories that
are seared into my mind forever.
I felt deflated and sad all that day. I cried a lot. For
Gareth, and for Christophe, the rider who died in the race, and his family. Remembering
the terror and fear I experienced on the day of Gareth’s accident, hoping and
praying that he would be ok, and knowing what Christophe’s family and loved ones would have been feeling
as they watched their son being taken to hospital in the helicopter. The long
anxious hours of waiting, the uncertainty, the helplessness you feel at being
unable to do anything, the disbelief that what has started out as a day like
any other, could have turned into a day you hoped you would never have to
experience. The feeling that time has been suspended and you’ve been removed
from the real world, caring only what happens to the person you love, the
sensation that what is happening isn’t real. I can imagine what that family are
feeling now, and know that there are no words that will take away their pain or
console them. Life has changed forever for them.
Time does not heal as so many people tell you. It doesn’t
make things easier or take away the pain, it simply gives you chance to slowly learn
how to manage it. It will always be part of you, you just have to figure out how to
live with it, and try to use it in a way that is positive, that honours the
memory of the person you have lost....I'm still figuring that out, and I hope in time the family of Christophe can
come to do that, but there are sure to be many hard months ahead, and my
thoughts go out to them. As for Christophe, I hope, like Gareth, that he is
riding free somewhere, on an endless ribbon of amazing singletrack, through the
most staggering scenery it’s possible to imagine…
This week I’m taking a break from the bike, it’s had some
much needed attention given to it in the form of fork and shock servicing and
brake bleeding, and is taking a little rest before the next guiding stint
starts! In the meantime, my Mum and Dad are here visiting, and it’s been really
lovely to show them some of the places I’ve been talking about since I first
started working here last spring. Despite spending lots of time in Winter in
the Alps, due to work on the farm being too busy in the summer, this is the
first time they’ve been able to come walking in the alps in the summer, and it
hasn’t taken them long to see why I love it here so much...
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| Among the Alpine flowers by Lac des Millefonds |
