ROUBION BIKE LAUNCH: 44°05′37″N 7°03′04″E

I’ve been to a few press camps and bike/product launches over the last few years, and they’re all usually pretty amazing. You get to go to some exotic (for the most part) bike destination, get put up in a nice (usually) hotel, get fed local food and the beer & wine usually flows freely – and don’t forget the cool bike swag (we’re all still the same kids at heart asking for stickers but only in grown up bodies). The one constant has been the fact that I’d usually be the only woman attending these launches – for the most part. So, yes, they are great, but it’s also not that easy to always be the odd one out. This was just how it was, a very male dominant industry and if you wanted to be a part of it that was or is the norm.

It was time for my yearly nomadic stint to Europe for racing, riding, adventuring & promoting Juliana Bicycles and my first stop on this 6 month stint away from home was the beloved village of Roubion. A tiny French 12^th-century village perched atop rocky outcrops, tucked away deep in the heart of the Alpes –Maritimes in Southeastern France. This area has a very special place in my heart. It is the main character of so many great memories shared with so many great friends and of course mind-blowing mountain bike tracks that just keep going from one mountain top to the next, meandering through old villages. These trails feel like home away from home.

So let me give you some background details as to the reason I was heading back there this time around. I fell in love with this area during the first Trans Provence race that I did back in 2011, and have raced it every year since then. I loved it so much that I also started guiding a few of the Trans Provence trips when it didn’t conflict with any other races or events and every time I return to this area, I just fall back in love with it, so it was a no brainer for me to head to these mountains to test my very first Juliana Bicycle when the Juliana Bicycles brand was launched at the beginning of 2013. I was given a Santa Cruz Bronson (or as I called it my small Johnson, or Bruliana) painted up as a Juliana to race, ride, adventure and put the feelers out there throughout the 2013 season and I chose my first guided trip of the season to put this bike to the test. After a week of schralping up and over the French mountains, I was convinced that this bike was the shizzle. It was amazing. It climbed with ease, descended like a mini downhill bike, handled well, just an all round perfect trail bike and I have never felt so good on a bike, ever and I knew that this bike had to be included in the line-up for other women to ride. Later that year I managed to take the Trans Provence win on this bike – one of the highlights in my cycling career, as that race to me is what mountain biking is all about. It’s long, hard, raw, blind; technical and you have to navigate your way down the mountain to try not to get too lost. It’s a proper adventure.

Fast-forward a year and a bit and I was heading back to my beloved village of Roubion, but this time for the launch of the actual Roubion bike that was now included in the Juliana Bicycles line-up. YES! The name Roubion, named after one of my favourite days during the stage race. Pretty exciting stuff if you ask me. I was heading out to the backcountry of France to shred some of my favourite trails on a bike launch with 10 other likeminded women. A first ever in such a male dominated bike industry, and I was feeling very excited and extremely proud.

We all met up in St Martin de Vesubie, where we got to know each other, catch up with old friends and share our common passion of riding bikes and exploring new destinations and trails. We had such a great gathering of women from the bike industry, all of us having worked hard to find our place in this industry and sticking to it. We had Nicole Formosa from Bike Magazine, Aoife Glass from Total Women’s Cycling, Janet Coulson from MBR, Faye Sanders from Bike Radar & Red Bull Bike, Berne Broudy, Sofie Schneider from Velo Tout Terrain, Carla Caballero, Mary Moncorge from Pinkbike and then Kathy Pruitt (Juliana’s demo bike queen), to help get all the women set up on their bikes properly, Katie Zaffke – the Juliana brand manager, Julia Hobson our guide and fellow Juliana ambassador, myself, Ash Smith – the main man behind Trans Provence and Sven Martin & Gary Perkin behind the lens capturing all the shenanigans. Our plan was to ride parts of the Trans Provence race starting where we would usually start day 3 of the race, and make our way to Roubion, and then ride in and around that area, finishing off at the bike park that they opened up just for us (cheers Ash!). It was lovely to get a little tour of the village, to learn about some of the history and to be welcomed by the Mayor, who was pretty stoked to see that some bike company in the US named their bike after their little village. We rode and rode some more, challenged ourselves, taught, helped, guided, informed, laughed, charaded (not an actual word, I know), crashed (that would be me) and ate and drank our way throughout the 3 day camp. Of course it wouldn’t be a proper Trans Provence experience without some torrential downpours, some hail and a landslide blocking off the pass. Building bonds, forming new friendships, riding bikes, sharing experiences and clogging our arteries with copious amounts of cheese. This is what biking is all about.

Everyone was super excited about this launch, as this was a first for all of us and a great indication of the commitment and direction of companies and where they were heading. They have invested and committed to a woman’s line of bikes and they were doing it properly. They were helping us to create our own separate identity and supporting us. It’s been a long time coming, but man, to see it actually come to life is a good sign of great things to come. Women have been waiting for this for a very long time indeed.

The Roubion will officially be released on June 1 – so stay tuned for more details about the bike and how and what it will be specced with and when you can expect them to start shipping to your house. Ladies, I suggest you sell that current bike of yours and make room for this beauty in your bedroom. She’s a keeper for sure.

Thank you to everyone who made this happen and for those helping to promote, grow and support the women out there who ride, live & breathe bikes. Time to heal up for a few weeks for me know, so I can get back out there on my bike.

Check out some other written pieces about the Roubion launch with lots more to come:

http://www.bikemag.com/gear/preview-santa-cruzs-juliana-brand-launches-6-inch-womens-bike/

http://www.bikemag.com/interviews/profile-anka-martin/

 Peace out,

Anka

Round 3 & other bike shenanigans at Les2Alps.

Round three of the Enduro World Series was held in the bizarre ski town/resort of Les 2 Alps, France. A visually spectacular place when you look at the mountains and surrounding scenery, but quite a strange 80's style architecture clad ski town with a million kids roaming about that get shipped out here to ski and snowboard camp for a summer filled glacier action.

The tracks here are very downhill bike oriented as it's situated in-between two really steep valleys, so I've never been a huge fan of this mountain for trail bike riding, because of all the brake bumps except for their two amazing tracks that they use for the Mountain of Hell race every year. Due to loads of snow, most of the upper, good trails were still closed to us for this race, so they had to make use of the two very steep slopes on either side of the valley. Nothing was marked out until Friday (I love that), then we had all day Saturday to practice and figure out the 4 different race tracks - which turned into a pretty epic day of riding bikes as most of us did all the tracks twice which ended up taking all day, resulting in a pretty battered body on Sunday morning for race day.

Stage one:

Long, pedally, fast, dusty, raw, brand new, steep pinches, many traverses, more pedaling, fresh grassy off camber, heater buses, fire road, bike park berms, a mother F*&$@r of a tar road & gravel climb that never ended, followed by more uphill traversing and finally a fast as all hell, straightline downhill down to the next villiage. Did I mention all the climbing? It was brutal. Noodle legs, arm pump, passing, shouting, frustration & elation. The amount of emotions that happen within those 15 or whatever the stage time was, is pretty unreal. This shit is so mental and if you know how to deal with that, then you'll do well at these races. I ended up in 9th place, felt surprisingly good on the climb, then got stuck trying to pass 3 girls on the narrow single-track descent. Frustrating. That's racing.

Stage Two:

This was a strange one. Flat out fire road sprint into a gnarly rock garden section and back onto another long ass fire road sprint, spin out & tuck section around to the front side of the mountain and then into some super narrow singletrack trails to the finish line. It seemed so much more pedaly during the race, but it was good, just couldn't get into this stage, it felt a bit disjointed to me. 9th place on this stage.

Stage Three:

After a long break we headed up for race number three. The best description would be awkward. Everything about this track was just awkward. Fine to ride, but a bit strange to race. It would definitely have been beneficial to be able to do nose wheelies on this track. I fumbled out of the start gate, all the way to the finish line. Just making every mistake in the book. O well, I had to settle with an 11th place here. On to the next one, and my favourite, number 4.

Stage Four:

This was my favourite track from the start. It was full pinned high speed down the mountain, off camber, grassy knolls, scary fast blind rises, brake bumps galore and then into this narrow singletrack section that wound all the way down to the valley floor. It was a proper trail. Steep & tricky and I loved it. I guess it helps when you enjoy a track as I got a 7th place on that stage behind a few World Champs - so that made my day & I was a happy girl.

These days the level is so high, that when you nail one or two stages and are happy with them, then you've managed to do well and you should be stoked. There is no such thing as a perfect run, they just don't happen, there are way too many variables involved for that to be possible. Tracy managed to take the win again which was so exciting & Jerome took the men's win. I couldn't be happier for these guys as they are both truly amazing bike riders and genuinely  passionate about riding their bikes and not just racing them. I managed to finish up in 9th place at the end of the day. Pretty happy with a top 10 these days, as the level out here is truly remarkable.

Cheers to another great weekend of racing & to everyone that managed to pull this off. It was different, not good or bad, just different which was great and it was hard, and that is how it should be and will hopefully remain to be. Next up - MegAvalanche & glaciers - ALARMA!!!!!!!!!

I'm back in rural France at my sisters house now, knackered, battered & bruised after the Mega, but excited to see my dad, celebrate my sister's 40th birthday & to catch up with internet, life, laundry & loads of amazing vegetarian cooking from me mum (much needed after raclette & tartiflette overdose). Keep posted for some Mega updates coming soon!

peace out, Anka xxx

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 2^nd 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 2^nd place with Rosara in third, Aimee Dix in 4^th & Hannah Thorne in 5^th (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 2^nd 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