My race report from Val D’Allos is up here on Bikemagic –

Enduro racing is very much in it’s infancy in the UK but out in France they have been racing Enduro’s for years, having great fun and keeping quiet about it ! Fred Glo from Tribe Sports has been running races for 10 years in France and this year I decided to venture into Europe and try one and take in some different races to see how I would fair and check out some different formats of racing.

Samoens was the location for the first round of the 4 race series. `Located just over the hill from it’s more famous neighbours Morzine and Les Gets, Samoens has the same great riding but just not as busy and over ridden !

Arriving on Friday morning after the long 12hr drive you could have been sure we had come to the wrong Samoens ! No sign of the race other than a few posters and a pile of barriers ! As the afternoon progressed more bikes and vans arrived and people started to disappear off in vans with no bikes…..there was no practice allowed, only course walking, but with no gondola open it was either get a lift up the hill or walk up and down !

Having seen the course profile we would be riding 5 descents on Saturday of around 900m each so there was no way you could walk all of these in one afternoon ! I got a lift up with my Cape Epic partner Anka Martin and walked the first half of one of the stages and after an hour of walking that was enough !! Steep, muddy natural terrain was going to be the feature of this weekend and full DH mud spikes were applied to our bikes to make sure we made it down the hill !

After picking up our numbers and timing chips and getting our bikes checked it was time to get packed ready for the 7.30am start the next morning ! Setting off down a very much unknown track at just after 8am in the morning was pretty tough going. The stage had some nasty little climbs and it was very quick awakening for the day ! That was only the first stage, 4 more to go ! We did the first stage twice which was great as the second time you had a much better idea of what to expect and it didn’t seem anywhere near as far ! The 3rd and 4th stages were on another track and this one I had not seen at all, so it was complete riding into the unknown. Another 10min plus stage and we still had to ride across to stage 5 in the next village ! We finally made it back to the base of the gondola in Samoens after around 1hr of timed DH racing !

Enduro Racing really is becoming popular not just in France now and it’s great to see an enduro series in many different countries now taking place. Ireland does not have many mtb races taking place so it’s a huge achievement and taken lots of hardwork from organiser Niall Davis to get the Gravity Enduro Series in Ireland up and running this year.

Fort William delivered yet another memorable weekend for me. This was the 10th World Cup race I have raced at Fort William and every time I feel so lucky to get the opportunity to ride in front of such an amazing home crowd. It is the best race of the year and it does have the best crowd and organisation and yet again 2012 delivered the same great mix of weather, atmosphere and midges !!

Moving away from downhill racing in 2012 meant that I only got on my DH bike for the first time since the worlds last year at the beginning of May and only had chance for a few days out on it to try and get up to speed ! I felt pretty good during the practice at Fort William but I just didn’t have the same upper body fitness that I have had in previous years and I was starting to feel it by race day ! I would loved to have won for a 6th time in Fort William but realistically it was going to be a lot to expect, so I set myself the goal of making the podium and that would be a great achievement.

After qualifying in 7th I knew I would be able to ride better in the final but the weather conditions set in and after a lot of overnight rain the mist and rain was set for race day and setting faster times was going to be hard in these conditions.

I managed to have a pretty safe run, riding the top section pretty well and then I started to make mistakes as I got further into my run. The new section at finish turned so soft after the rain I was sure I had a puncture, even looking down to check as I pedalled into the finish area ! It wasn’t flat, the ground was just so soft

After the horrendous weather of Round 2 we were once again greeted with summer for round 3 of the Gravity Enduro Series. Having spent all week nursing a fairly delicate head I felt pretty rested and ready for the weekend but I just hoped my head would feel ok and keep up !

Thankfully I felt fine once on the bike and I think the short stages and short loop meant I was not going to be out for hours in the baking heat ! The 5 stages around Hamsterley forest were a complete mix of natural, loamy terrain to man made trail centre. The dry conditions made the man made surface really slippery and made it really hard to push hard in the corners. The complete loop with the 5 stages was only around 20km and it meant that I was able to do 2 laps of the course on Friday and another 4 out of the 5 stages on Saturday morning making me feel as though I had learnt the stages a little more than you can on some of the longer ones !

I knew I would need to learn them well as both Helen Gaskell and Sarah Newman are locals and would be gunning to beat me on home turf !

After a timing glitch on the seeding run we started off Sunday with a clean sheet as the seeding run times would not count. I was not sure if my time for seeding was right or not so I knew I had to push hard on the short stages to get any advantage over the other girls. With the stages averaging around 2min30sec they felt really short and it took me until the 4th stage to finally feel like I was riding well. I had not made any mistakes and pushed really hard on the pedalling sections and all I had to hope for was no mechanicals or punctures this time ! I had been checking my tyres after each stage this time after my lesson in Coed-y-Brenin. The final stage went well and we then just had to wait for the times to be announced later in the day. Its actually quite an anxious wait at the enduro races as you have no idea how you have done until all the stages are complete. The times were up for stages 1 and 5, so I knew I had a couple of seconds advantage after them, but we still had to wait for the rest of the results.

The final results were out and I had managed to hold off the locals and took the win by 42secs ahead of Helen Gaskell with Sarah Newman in 3rd.

A great weekend and further cementing my love of Enduro races, such good days out on your bike and a great work out at the same time !!

Apologies for the lack of updates on my website, I somehow mislaid the password to log on to do any updates ! All sorted now …

My final foray in to the XC world took place at world cups in Czech and France. Some tough racing and a big crash ended my hopes of getting a top 50 finish.

For the full story take a look at my blog on Bikemagic –

I decided it was time I dusted off the DH bike and just checked that I hadn’t forgotten how to ride one ! There was also a perfect opportunity to race and support a local grassroots downhill event at the Forest of Dean put on by the volunteer trail building group, Dean Trail Volunteers.

I definitely felt a little rusty on the DH bike and it felt so sluggish and slow compared to the XC bikes I have been riding so much over the last few months ! However I soon got back into it and realised that you really can just point the DH bike at stuff and it just eats it up ! Even with all my xc and pro sprint training the DH race run still left me breathing hard at the finish !! It’s such an intense event and this one was short and pedally so it was even more of a interval session !!

I managed to just take the win ahead of fellow Trek racer Jess Stone and now I have a few more weeks of XC before really turning my hand back to some more downhill in preparation for Fort William World Cup !

Thanks to everyone involved for putting on a great event, even the sun came to visit !!

After a tough few weeks of XC racing I was really looking forward to a little more gravity racing this weekend ! With the weather always looking to play its part we managed to find a dry window to get out and ride the first 3 stages on Friday afternoon. Coed-y-Brenin was one of the original trail centres and its testament to how well built the trails are as over 15 years later they are still in good condition. We all knew this round of the Enduro series was going to be a man made trail centre and I was expecting a lot more pedalling than Innerleithen as I have ridden the trails many times and they are xc trails ! The first 3 stages took in most of the old, original Red Bull trail and they were quite pedally but also physically tough as the rock here is just solid and it was a good upper body workout as well as a leg workout !

Stages 4 and 5 were on the new side of the road and took in some of the MBR trail. Stage 4 was a great stage with some flat rocky technical trail at the start then into a new smooth bermed and jumpy free ride trail, some fireroad and a short climb and then a great descent to finish. Stage 5 was a short stage but it had a brutal 45 sec pedal on the flat to get to the finish arena so it was hard one to finish on !

Saturday was a nice dry day for practice and for qualifying. I had a good seeding run, taking 1st place ahead of Helen Gaskell by close to 20 sec.

Thanks to Jacob Gibbins for this picture of some dry riding during the seeding run.

Sunday as forecast poured with rain all day long ! I was so glad of my new sponsor Endura as this is the first year I have been sponsored by a kit company that makes kit designed for the UK weather !! I ended up riding in my full waterproof jacket and 3/4 waterproof shorts and I even got out my Shimano winter boots to keep my feet toastie all day !! On a day like that good kit really does make a massive difference and I was so pleased to have good kit and the experience / old age to know when to use it ! I saw so many people freezing cold and wet through without any waterproofs.

Staying warm was the biggest challenge during the day as once your hands were soaked through the cold wind soon froze your hands when you got up to speed on some of the fire road sections. I had some serious pain as my hands came back to life at the end of stage 3 !

Trying to stay warm required huddling in the trees to gain body warmth !!

I was really happy with how I was riding and I really felt the benefits of the XC racing and training I have done since the last enduro as I felt strong on all the pedalling sections. I caught up with my 20sec rider on most stages and on the long and flat stage 3 I managed to pass the whole elite women’s field, so I knew I was going well !

Sadly my luck ran out and about 1 min in to stage 4 I ended up on the floor whilst taking a big berm on the freeride section. Getting up I wondered what had happened, but as I set off again I realised that I had a rear flat ! With a lot of the stage still left I decided to stick a tube in and get to the finish. In the panic of the moment I forgot I had a CO2 inflator and just used my pump like normal, so lost a very valuable 6 mins on stage 4. Sadly I was not able to get that much time back and finished 3 mins back in 5th place. I was pretty gutted as I had worked really hard all day and came away with nothing. I was even more frustrated as I had no idea how I had punctured as I was running tubeless, however investigations the next day when I got home revealed a small dent in the rim and some damage to the bead and sidewall of the tyre, so I must have hit the rim earlier in the day or earlier on that stage which must have lost some air pressure then when I pushed hard in the berm the tyre just burped and lost all the air…bummer.

That’s enduro racing and you have to get yourself and your equipment through the whole day. That said I still had a great day and even in those conditions the format and social nature of enduro racing is a winner !

For the first part of 2012 my race schedule included some XC races with my focus being on the Pro Sprint races at the World Cup rounds. Most of the UK national XC races clashed with the UK Gravity Enduro races, but this weekend I was free and decided to travel up to Dalby for round 2 of the National Series. Having only ever raced at Sport level at an XC national I did not know what to expect in the Elite field. Having had such a painful and demoralising experience at the WC at Houffalize last weekend I was feeling mentally down on the XC world ! This weekend would be a little different starting on the 2nd row in a field of 30, rather than being on the back row in a field of 90 women. It meant that I had chance to get a good start and be in the race from the start and not having to walk and queue round the first part of the lap ! Weather conditions were not great and after a massive downpour and hailstorm on the Saturday it left the start filed pretty muddy by race day and the start loop was pretty wild. I got some great speedway style drifts going on as I managed to get up to 2nd and followed Annie Last around the start loop.

It was great to get to ride for a short time with Annie. She really is a great talent for the UK and she really can ride a bike up and downhill which is great to see ! I just couldn’t maintain her pace after the first start loop and thought I would just blow up if I tried to stay at this pace for much longer ! I gradually got overtaken by 2 visiting foreign WC riders and Scottish talent Lee Cragie during the first main lap and came through after lap one in 5th pace. I was happy with that, but sadly I still had 3 laps to go ! I kept reeling in Lee and the Japenese girl over the next couple of laps after the technical section and down Worry Gill and then the gap would open up again as we had to climb back up the long climb from Medusa’s drop ! I did manage to maintain a decent pace and held my position to take my first ever Elite XC podium at a National !

The muddy conditions definitely played into my strengths as the course was tough and got pretty cut up in places. I think I also learnt a lot about racing XC as my last lap was one of my fastest, showing that I really could have gone harder at the start as I still had something left at the end ! This XC racing really is tough, I have so much to learn about just how much you can push your body over a long period of time !

Next weekend it’s back to some Enduro Racing. I think the 5 minute stages will seem easy now after this !!

The race season certainly started out in the most perfect way, with a