time to reflect.

Where have the weeks gone to? They have been flying by in my world with so many things happening all the time, that you just keep moving on from one thing to the next, with no time to stop and think about the amazing thing that you did yesterday, or the day before yesterday, or last week, you just pack your bags, catch the next shuttle, drop off the next rental car and fly to the next destination, unpack, deal with jet lag and carry on. To me this is my way of trying to live a normal life, to just pick up and carry on, looking ahead at the next event, venue, country, language and or food and putting the past whatever it was behind and moving right along to the next thing.

So, I'm going to keep this update short & sweet, because it's way past due and it's time for me to look ahead and move on.

I'll start back in Canada at the crankworx festival in Whistler.

1) Enduro World Series round #5 - enduro race of epic proportions. One solid, big day of adventuring on our bikes, mostly outside of the bike park on some sick, scary, pretty awkward, tecky new trails - it was incredibly awesome & I ended up 9th overall. The organizers definitely stepped up their game and put on one hell of an enduro race.

2) All day Sombrio photo shoot the day after the all day enduro race - I wasn't tired at all! It was such a fun day though & I got to see some new bits of Whistler. Any day spent with Lindsey Voreis & Aaron is bound to be a fun, entertaining day!

3) Escape the madness that is Whistler village - YOGA, YOGA, YOGA! yessss please.

4) An all day filming day on top of the world in the rain for the new SRAM Pike ad - and no, I was not going downhill all day, I was actually climbing uphill a hell of a lot - I was AIR. Pretty exciting stuff and a first for me to do some filming work. Quite excited & nervous to see the final product.

5) Free ladies XC & DH riding clinics offered by SRAM and a part of Rebecca Rusch's Gold Rusch tour. Unbelievable turnout from all the ladies and we loved helping them get more confident on their bikes. Although a pump track session in the rain was a bit sketchy.

6) Headed up to 100 mile house in the middle of Canada somewhere for Rob & Shanna Parkin's wedding by the lake. It was such an awesome wedding, but we were zooming back to Vancouver at first light as we had a 6 hour drive to tackle to catch our next plane back to Europe for the next race.

Arrive in Lyon, France - bonjour good coffee & croissants  - and cheap food!

1) Met up with Jon Cancellier in Lyon, loaded up our trusty old van who waited in parking lot 5 patiently for the past 5 weeks & headed straight to La Thuile, Italy to meet with Enrico and his crew for some filming.

2) Up early for an all day filming affair with Sven & myself featured as the couple who like to adventure on our bikes. They are making this to promote & showcase this relatively unknown riding area & also because it will be the Enduro Des Nations venue for 2014.

3) Up even earlier and heading over to Val D'Isere, France for the 6th round of the Enduro World Series.

4) Pretty knackered from jet lag - I opt to nap whenever I could.

5) Up even earlier than before - like 7 am early and on the lift for Saturday race day. Massive over the bars to wake up to. Sunshine & dust to begin with. Massive hike-a-bikes to the top of the start, then turning into massive storms, fog and no visibility with most of the girls getting lost somewhere on course, it made for a vary exciting, very varied day of racing.

6) Yep, you guessed it, on the lift at 7am again, this time the surrounding mountains were covered in snow. Yes, snow. No practice, straight into racing, holy shit, locked out shock - dammit, sick mud, long tracks, freezing cold, awesome. Super physical stages, so much pedaling, so much concentration, so cold, so happy to survive & end up in 7th overall.

7) Another early morning rise, this time to eat amazing French pastries and copious amounts of cafe creme's at the most amazing bakery in the morning sun. Bliss, but not for long. Rush, rush, rush, pack, pack, squeeze and Sven, Jon & myself are on the road again, back to Lyon airport so they can catch the next plane to South Africa and the World Championships.

8) Thank F#@K I'm not going anywhere. After dropping them off, I had a leisurely 2 hour drive into the "a la campagne" - the quiet French countryside back to the little village with 60 people where my parents & my sister lives. Where the pace is a tad slower, the streets are quiet, the food is fresh & where I can go to find some peace & quiet and just sit down to reflect and think about all the amazing happenings of the last few weeks. I can think about all the high's and all the low's that go hand in hand with racing & traveling. All the should have's, could have's and would have's. All the fun times, the nervous times, the scary times and the o my God I almost died times. I can think about all the money I spent on coffee, pastries & food in Whistler - but I choose to eliminate those thoughts & marvel in all the good memories with good old friends & bikes.

Time for some mellow country road rides, yoga, yard chores, drinking red wine with dad and cooking with mum. Happy girl.

Thank you Sven for the AMAZING shots!

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