enduro racing

Dodzy Memorial weekend of stoke.

As soon as we wrapped up our 8-day Juliana video & photo shoot, we barely had time to do laundry & wash bikes before we headed out to Wairoa gorge for the DME. A weekend filled with good friends, great memories and amazing bike tracks in the middle of nowhere surrounded by beautiful native forest. I wasn’t feeling tired at all, after filming non stop for the past 8 days, and leaving for Chile for a big race on the Monday following the DME, but I wasn’t going to miss this for anything – knackered or not, we’re going to the gorge to ride or race or hang out – whatever you like to call it – enduro-ing these days. The skies opened up for an entire day & night only to leave all the really techy tracks even more techy & slippery, but the sun was out and it felt like the perfect summer weekend. The tracks that we raced on this year were some of the hardest ones built out there and the slippery conditions made it really fun and also really unpredictable and bloody scary. Saturday was super fun, catching up with everyone, and riding some new tracks. I thought that by Sunday things would have dried up a bit more, but in fact it ended up being even more slippery. My goal was to get down the mountain, have fun, try not to crash too many times and to get to Chile on Monday for the Andes Pacifico stage race.

Well it started off well, and it ended off well, but the end of my 2nd run was pretty great until right near the end where I lost all my biking skills and crashed myself silly for a wee while and even getting jammed up in-between some trees. Not ideal, but no damage done, except for some major bruising. I knew right then that there was no chance of getting on the box that day. The girls that ride out here are absolutely amazing bike racers & riders, especially on the gnarly shit. One small mistake with this lot and you’re off the back. Of course you feel that little bit of disappointment – that is normal, otherwise you wouldn’t race, but that was washed away quickly when you think about the actual reasons for being out here in the first place. This is not about you or I or us, or racing this is about the great memories of an amazing friend & person, and celebrating everything that he was so passionate about. Cheers Dodzy for creating such an amazing playground. In the end Rosara smashed us to take the win, with Harriet in second place and Gabby in third. Super happy to see Gabby up on the podium – it made my day & I knew that this was a special weekend for her. Justin Leov took the Elite men's win & Sven got a pretty sweet looking first place trophy for the mantelpiece that we don't own - well done everyone!

Thanks to everyone for another amazing weekend of playing on bikes!

Next it was time to do laundry and pack up to head out to Chile. Andes Pacifico, here we come!

No better way to end a day of shredding & racing bikes with good mates.

Out & about in-between races.

Our European migrations every year does involve a shit load of work, mostly at races & other events, with loads of driving, late night editing, lots of internet cafe time, laundry sessions, packing & re-packing, washing & sorting bikes & gear, getting the trusty (rusty) old van fixed and so on, but we do try to do something fun in-between the long drives from one country to the next and from event to event. These little side trips are usually the one's that we end up enjoying the most and that we end up sharing with our good friends. None of us really have much time at the races & events to actually catch up properly and hang out, everyone is so busy with their own thing, but when we do these little mini trips in-between, that is when we actually get to spend some quality time with our mates on the road & we get to play and ride bikes. The sign says it all.

Pretty patterns.

I am intrigued by all the shrines you come across on the rides in Europe.

Italian colours.

Tracks & trails.

I got to explore the Valley of the Sun in Italy while the DH World Cup action was going on a few weeks ago (pics above).

We got to go to one of our favourite places to ride, swim, eat way too much gelato & drink loads of red wine & lemoncello - Lake Garda in Italy. We had a big old crew this year which is always fun to do one of our all time favourite rides from Malcesine back to the lake. We also got to catch up with our good friends from California, Megan & Andy that just happened to be in Italy for work at the same time. Perfect!

High above Lake Garda, heading to the lake for lunch & a swim.

Exchanging bikes for scooters for some lake cruising with Rach.

Soaking up the sunshine.

Calm before the storm in Santa Barbara, exploring secret tracks with Victor & Sven.

Beautiful Torbole, Lago di Garda, Italy.

Sven & Andy lounging in the  lake.

Megan & I catching up on the last two years of life.

A big shuttling day from Col De Champs before the Val D Allos enduro race was pretty epic.

Another big shuttling day after the Val D Allos race was another pretty amazing day of riding before heading out of this beautiful valley.

Col D Allos for some apres race fun riding with friends.

Exploring the Val D Allos valleys & chapels.

After Val D Allos we made our way to the hidden gem of Moustiers St Marie tucked away in the Gorges Du Verdon for some swimming & kayaking adventures with Jon C & Christine and Tracy & James.

Our vanie, loaded up to the max, heading to the next destination (not all our shit though).

Moustiers St Marie, France

More shrines & holy stuff.

Plotting our next adventure with JC & Christine over croissants & coffee.

Cool restaurants.

Loving the food in France  - is it possible to overdose on chèvre?

Lavender fields - we must be in Provence.

Moustiers St Marie.

Typical villiage signs.

The good life is a simple life.

In awe of the scenery we stumble upon. Checking out the gorges with JC & Christine.

It's summertime. Swimming, kayaking, beers & good times with JC, Christine, T-Mo, James & Sven.

Stunning turquoise waters of the Gorges Du Verdon - France's best kept secret.

Peaceful places. I love you Tar xx

There are a few (lots) places that I've always wanted to go to, that we just never end up getting to, so hopefully we'll be able to go on a few more mini trips this summer and experience some new countries, places, trails & cultures. Isn't that the whole reason we got into riding bikes in the first place?

Happy girl.

Anyhow, I'll keep you updated here on our mini adventures in-between all the important stuff.

peace out, Anka xxx

bikes, burgers, beers & a bit of racing in Queenstown.

Fergburger chowdown What a great week of riding bikes, racing, hanging out, full moon yoga in the park, stunning sunrises, warm sunshine, swimming, drinking beers, racing down rude rock, shopping & eating massive Fergburgers while being surrounded by the most spectacular scenery wherever you looked.

Team Trail Fund

First up was the 6-hour enduro Super D race that Rosara Joseph & I teamed up to race together in the super competitive women’s category of teams of two. We were team Trail Fund NZ (www.trailfund.org.nz), and I had no idea what I had gotten myself into.  Not wanting to let down my Olympian XC teamie, I was getting a bit nervous, and even more so after our first lap when it was revealed to me that this was going to be way more of a xc race than anything else and not at all the track we thought it was going to be held on (which was nice and downhilly). Anyway, not having much of a choice, I gave it everything I could and we managed to clock 13 laps over the 6 hours of racing. I was knackered, but it felt great and we took the win! (Hats off to Rosara who almost died the day before after her carbon bars decided to snap while descending at mach speed).

6 hour Super D

Yippeeee!

The rest of the week was spent exploring old and new trails, shuttle runs, xc rides, coffee shopping, eating & free full moon yoga in the park with gluten free cupcakes & wine après savasana – thank you Lululemon! (No wonder their sports bra’s cost what they do).

Enduro racing

Next up was the Enduro race, which consisted of 4 super fun tracks, two of them were super pedally and 2 of them were proper, fast, flowy enduro tracks which made for a great combination of racing. There were also two pretty long liaison stages in-between and made for an all round super social, fun day of racing. The racing was super tight and that made it very exciting, especially when I ended up with a mechanical during my 3rd stage. A quick MacGyver fix managed to hold up so I could race the last stage, but in the end, I finished in second place only a few seconds behind the winner. Harriet & I ended up getting the exact same time down the last stage – Zoot’s, with a time of 1:55, which was really close to the top men’s times, so I was very pleased with that. Cheers to Harriet for taking the win & to Rosara for third place. We rocked it.

Queenstown beauty

Cock Rock, I mean rude rock!

Of course a week of riding bikes will cause a few casualties - Boyd hit a tree, really, really fast and is nursing a fractured pelvis, Simon has another gimp shoulder for a few weeks after not agreeing with a gap jump, Sven tore his shoulder ligaments and wrote off his new helmet. Healing vibes coming your way!

Exhausted after a pretty jam packed week, it was time to pack up and head back home to Nelson to hopefully catch a few more sunny days up there on the bike before the Winter sets in.

Cheers to Queenstown!

Trail Fund NZ

Trans Provence adventures of Team Dark Cloud aka The Village people.

It has been a pretty busy week since the finish of the most epic Trans Provence adventure last week, I haven’t had one moment to just sit back & reflect upon the many crazy & many memorable events that occurred within those short 7 days, but here goes…

This past week has been an endless project of trying to pack up all our bikes & stuff that we have had here in Europe for the past 5months. Not only do I have to pack up the 5 bikes that we have with us, but I’ve had to scrub & wash each and every one of them, including all the tires, shoes & gear so that they are squeaky clean for the Nazi New Zealand customs inspectors. Trying to get 5 months worth of European Summer mud off of everything is no easy feat, and I am pretty darn over cleaning shit right now. The only good thing about this, is that the bikes & kit will be ready & raring to get riding as soon as we get home. Yes please.

Right then, back to the crazy adventure that is called the Trans Provence.

Well, I didn’t think that this year would be able to top last year, but it did, in epic proportions. It wasn’t harder, in fact, it was easier, as some of the stages were made a bit shorter, but due to some massive storms, bad weather, near death cliff flinging experiences, helicopter rescues, general crashes due to us pushing too hard, navigation issues, bad water & some emotional stuff that we were trying to get to terms with, it made for a pretty amazing 7 days. From the start we naturally split off into smaller groups and that seemed to stick for the duration of the race. We never tried to get home last everyday, or have something crazy & pretty scary happen to us every day, but somehow it did, and our group just kept growing tighter & tighter, to the point where we were sticking together like glue. We ate together, rode together; pee’d together, high fived together, quit jobs together, laughed & cried together. After a series of events that started happening, we named ourselves Team Dark Cloud, as it seemed like wherever we went or whatever we did, shit would hit the fan! Most of the Team Dark Cloud members were friends before the TP, but we became really great friends last week, and it is a crew that I cannot wait to share many more adventures with.

Tired of me ranting on about the crew, it is hard for me not to. Yes it was a race, but it is hard to explain this race to anyone who hasn’t experienced it before. It is hard, really, really hard & it is mentally & physically very challenging. You start off wanting to win, wanting to push as hard as possible, but as you figure it out, you realize that there is so much more to it that just racing & the results. Of course we are all there, because we like to race & we want to do well, but this week just proved to me again, how important it is to have great friends, and how incredibly lucky we are to meet such great, likeminded people on our bikes.

I am really happy about my 2nd place finish behind Anne Caroline Chausson, and even happier that I was actually able to win the overall on one day. Rosara and I were close all week too, she would put minutes into me on the longer climbing stages and it would take me days before I could make up the time with some of the shorter downhill stages, but in the end I managed to take 2nd place with Rosara in third, Aimee Dix in 4th & Hannah Thorne in 5th (Not bad to have 3 Kiwi girls in the top 5). Apart from the results, it was great to get to know Anne & the other girls better. A few of us have  been to so many races & raced together for so many years, but we’ve never actually hung out. We did at the TP. We drank red wine, chatted about babies & boyfriends & became friends. I’ll never forget my first encounter with ACC. It was my very first Pro race at Sea Otter classic in 2001 & she started behind me #FML! I take my hat off to each and every girl that finished the TP week – it was hard & they should all be super proud of themselves. It was so great to meet some new girls who like to do silly things!

The race between the AM class men was the most exciting, with Sven, Chris Ball, Seb Kemp, Tobias and many others racing against each other as if they were back on the World Cups circuit! It was great to see these friends rotating results every day, and drinking & bantering over the results each night. In the end it was Toby who took the win, with Seb in second place & Joe in third.

Of course the Pro Men’s race was very exciting as usual. With Nicolas Lau taking the win, Nicolas Vouilloz in second & Jerome Clementz in third (not bad for being part of Team Dark Cloud).

What happened to Team Dark Cloud on a daily basis was more exciting than most people experience in a lifetime. Looking back on the week now, puts a huge grin on my face & I cannot help but giggle to myself. Not funny at the time, but we will be sharing these stories for many more years to come, and that is what life is all about to me. We are rich with memories & friends.

Below are just a few of the happenings that occurred during the week:

Jon Cancellier started off the first stage by carcassing down the steepest part of the track, then I was attacked by a stick that almost poked my eye out, but instead just poked a hole in my forehead causing blood to gush out like a drinking fountain. Hannah Barnes was attacked by that same stick, and the two of us looked like we got into a cat fight.

We got caught on the top of a really exposed mountain, during a really, really big, scary thunder, lightning & hailstorm, where we just wanted to get off the mountain. We didn’t even bother with kneepads; it was too cold to feel your hands. At one point I didn’t even know if I was braking or not, I was so frozen. There was no thought of racing, it was absolute survival, and I was hoping & praying during my race run that someone wouldn’t die. During this stage, we got stuck crossing muddy, waist deep flash flooding rivers, which were mere ride able creek crossings for the earlier groups. Jerome crashed & lost his pants during the thunderstorm & put a hole in his penis. Well not his penis, but close! He managed to finish that stage in his extra holey, fishnet Mavic stockings, I mean lycra. What a legend. Jey also managed to recruit an entire Cannondale team after handing out dry t-shirts to all of us for the remainder of the day. Go team Dark Cloud Cannondale – and this was only day 2.

We all got lost, a lot, especially Chris Ball – that man needs a compass, o, and Hannah & Seb also joined in – or were they just the search & rescue team looking for Chris?

Devastated about his navigational error & time loss, Chris decided to take flight off a cliff the next day, into the abyss, in front of us all, on his 10-year anniversary day. I thought he was a gonner & still have visions of his yellow 29er cart wheeling down to the valley floor & for a moment there I had visions of having to call Kate & e-mail her the photo he took for her just minutes earlier.

Sven managed to acquire the nickname of Sven doggie, so of course that stuck as we all thought it to be hilarious (maybe due to all of us being delirious).

A wasp nest decided to attack some of our crewmembers & of course they were allergic. Bad water the previous day, caused us to almost loose Seb & Jon. Thank goodness I had charcoal tablets & rehydration powder to get them through the day. Jon managed to vomit all day long, including during his timed stage races. As if this was not enough, Jon also slipped & fell down a massive cliff, thank goodness we had Paul Smail the fireman to hoist him back out & then to top it all off he hit a tree going full speed 20 meters before we finished for the day. Not a day Jon would like to repeat.

Sven managed to flat, then double flat again along with Seb & Chris also flatting. Smail knocked himself silly one morning & jacked up his shoulder pretty badly.

I can go on and on, but there were too many things to list. I must say the funniest one was when JC was lying in a ditch and all I could see was a talking head when I came down shouting at me not to take this line!

As the week progressed we tried to stick together incase something really bad had to happen, and of course it did. All we had to do was make it to the beach on a relatively short day, but Sven had other plans. Day 7, stage 1 was slippery & wet and he went down hard, or hit a tree hard I should say. A few of the Team Dark Cloud members were still at the top, so we were able to get to him quickly. He was pretty out of hit, hit his face & head pretty hard, and his arm was looking a bit wrong. As Sven would later say after some morphine, “God, who was I riding with, the fucking Village People?” We had Hannah Barnes, a nurse in real life, who just took charge, she was amazing, and then we had Bjorn the doc who supplied all the morphine & Smail the “handle bar mustached fireman, we had Toby & Sam, the logistics brothers & organizers & Jerome the translator. Chris, Jon, Joe & Matti were the moral support & keep the humor going crew. The whole team was amazing. Team Dark Cloud pulled together. Thank you to everyone that helped. We got Sven stabilized & he got heli lifted out of the forest & off to Nice – beating us all to the beach after all.

"Ankie, Ankie, do they know my arm is broken?"

"Joe Barnes took that inside line, and he made it look so easy".

"Can I take my baguette with me to the hospital, I'm so hungry".

"Be careful, I think it's very slippery today"

Sven’s whole incident in that forest last week was very emotional. It ended up being a badly broken arm & concussion, but it brought back so many memories of when he broke his neck & it freaked me out. I couldn’t stop thinking about my good friend Gabby, who had just lost her soul mate a few weeks earlier & seeing Sven lying there, wrapped up in space blankets, I couldn’t even begin to imagine how Gabby must have felt & how amazingly brave she must have been. We had also been riding with the presence of Jaymie Mart, a good friend of ours that left us all too soon – she was laughing at us & all our antics from the back of Chris Balls number plate all week. Matti also broke down when he saw Sven with flashes of all his past injuries coming back to him and just being too overwhelming to deal with. It brought out so many emotions between all of us, things that we have been trying to deal with and get to terms with over the past few weeks, and I personally want to thank each and every one of you for being there with me. I truly feel we have all made progress with whatever demons we’ve been chasing or have been chasing us.

What was supposed to be a relatively short day with a swim in a sunny, hot Mediterranean sea, turned out to be quite a bit different for Team Dark Cloud. After Sven took off for Nice, we all had to carry on racing. Not ideal. I still had 4 races to do, or to hold it together and get to the bloody beach in one piece. Of course due to our delay  - thanks babes- we got caught in another massive storm while everyone else had completed the Trans Provence & were drinking beers & high fiving all around. Team Dark Cloud was back! Jerome took Sven’s timing chip & clocked him in for every stage race. That was so rad. Thanks Jerome. Sven even managed to get a 2nd place in the Pro class during the one stage! We raced the last two stages in pouring rain, on slippery ass rocks, and we just wanted to be done. Of course it would all be too simple if we actually just finished up. Two stages, big deal. Hannah managed to flat, I managed to have a massive crash, Toby ripped off his rear mech, we were all starving & out of water, then to top it all off, Chris Ball had a massive crash, wrapping his neck around a tree and that had Seb & Jon pile right into him, leaving them all in a big pile up 200meters from the finish of the race. Chris & Seb managed to get up and clock out, but Jon had done his ankle in pretty badly. Paul Smail, the fireman had yet another rescue to tend to, as he had to carry Jon out of there and get him off to the hospital. OMG, we had all sort of all finished the bloody Trans Provence.

We promised to jump into the ocean for Sven, so we had a mission. Come hell or high water, we were going for a swim. We survived; we bonded (especially with Paul’s leopard print speedo). We became great friends. Hopefully nothing else would happen with our crew before the end of the day, as it turns out Toby couldn’t swim – so we all got a bit nervous, and got the hell out of the water! It wasn’t complete with our missing compatriots, but it was a great feeling of accomplishment. So there you have it, another Trans Provence done & dusted. It was time to drink beer & share stories with all the other brave soldiers. Will I be back next year, hell yes, I’ll be back!

Peace out

Anka x

URGE helmet ambassador!

I am very proud to be one of the new URGE helmet ambassadors!

It is something that I am very, very excited about, as it is a company that is really close to my heart. I love their helmets, I love what they stand for, and I love that they are eco friendly & conscious about the environment. A company that gives back, in fact they are a 1% for the planet member, and they have a veggie range of helmets made from linen fibre?!? How freaking cool is that?  I love this, and I cannot wait to go on many more adventures, trips & races representing the URGE brand & trying to make a difference by bike!        (Above pic is me on Day 1 of the Trans Provence, and also my first day wearing my new helmet - I had to see if it worked!)

I just completed the very brutal 7 day Trans Provence race with my new Endur-O-matic  helmet, and it was fantastic. It never moved, the visor never dropped forward to cover my eyes during rough, technical descents - and believe me, there were plenty of that during the TP, the straps were comfortable, my riding glasses fit like a glove, it wasn't too hot, it kept me warm during all the storms we encountered and it matched my green Santa Cruz Nomad to a tee! A girl's got to look good on her bike you know!

Anyhow, check out their 2013 line & see what this forward thinking company is all about.

www.urgebike.com

Driven by our roots.

Peace out

Anka x