Ride Progression’s Enduro Skills Camp will combine mountain bike coaching from Whistler qualified coach Oli, with trail riding, bike set-up and bike repair tips. I’ll be on hand to offer advice and tips for training and preparation for Enduro racing. With a small group (4-6 people) there will be chance to learn lots. The camp is from Friday 16th – Sunday 18th of June, biker friendly accomodation is included and of course there will be chance to chill out and enjoy the mountains with post-ride beers and a bbq.

More information is on Facebook here and Redbull’s description of the area here.

Check out Ride Progression’s website for their other offers for individual and group mountain bike coaching sessions in Zürich and the nearby Alps.

A few weeks ago I did the Trans Savoie, a 6 day enduro race high up in the French Alps with 6000m descent per day as well as lots of pedalling. We began in Val d’Isere, racing in different areas of the Savoie Alps and camping overnight with the finish at Mont Blanc.

It rained over night before day one and clouds swirled around the mountains as we made our way up in a chairlift to over 2000m to the start of the first stage. The day had some good variety including bike park, really technical awkward rocky singletrack, rooty woodland, fast flowy trails and looooong climbs with stunning views. First day nerves and wet greasy trails had me riding like a muppet for much of the day, pinballing down the hills and loosing time with stupid crashes and mistakes. The nightmare situation would be to crash out on the first day so I was happy to get to the end in one piece and hoped to settle in as the week went on.

Day two was based around Bourg St Mource where there were more clouds and some rain on the cards. Some more time on the gondolas and well as some uphill pedalling and lots of long, technical, intense trails made a tough, tiring day. Having missed a turn and climbed an extra 500m, by the time we got to the top of the last stage I was so exhausted I wondered how I could survive a 900m descent. It’s amazing how a great trail can energise you (combined with eating a load of energy gels), and after 30 seconds I’d forgotten the tiredness and was racing absolutely flat out in pissing rain down an insanely fun bike park track. The unusual black dirt had an unexpected amount of grip so you could com screaming into rock garden and bermed corners flat out, wheels drifting but somehow always stayingng upright. There were riders close by in front and behind so motivation to push hard was even higher and left everyone was bouncing of the walls by the end, buzzing on endorphin’s and excitement. Awesome but didn’t sleep well that night, kept getting flashbacks of loamy corners and smashing berms!

By day 3 I’d lost track of were we were but the first stage started at the top of a huge mountain with massive 360 views of surrounding peaks and glaciers. It a real epic day with two 1000m+ descents starting up above the tree line, crossing open mountains before dropping into woodland trails with more switchbacks, today with dust included as the sun made an appearance. The last trail was on more unusual grippy black dirt along a river with some incredible steep drops, roller coaster whoops, pedally sprints and tight switchbacks. Stoke levels one again high and the day seemed less exhausting than day 2.

Day 4. We moved closer to Mont Blanc riding in the Meribel/Courchevel area withthe big snowed capped peak providing a backdrop to much of the days riding. The sun was blazing down, the trails offered another big mix of technical, bike park and flow. This was the kind of day you forgot you were tired, the views on the transitions were stunning so it was impossible to complain about the pedaling between stages. I joined up with a few of the other girls so that we could get a good run on the tracks without worrying about having to let faster guys past. It was one of the most fun days on the bike I’ve ever had, the last two trails left us with a severe case of ‘over stoke’, we rode flat out chasing each other down loamy corners and flat out pine needle woodland but finding extra breath to whoop and holler in excitement as the trails just got better and better. By the end of the day we were literally exploding with endorphins, I can’t imagine how heroin can offer a better hit.

Day 5. The pervious day’s madness where tiredness was masked by adrenaline, meant I woke up feeling exhausted and realising that I could be in for a tough one. We had a couple of chairlifts but a lot of climbing between stages meaning a long day in the saddle. My forearms were like solid lumps of concrete from all the arm-pump and it was becoming difficult to pull the brakes and stay focused for the full length of a descent. There were some rad trails, mostly technical and steep but fun. The last one, just as everyone was feeling really exhausted, was probably the hardest of the race. In a damp forest, the whole thing was litttered with greasy rocks and steep grippless corners that required full commitment to ride. Having felt good on the bike all week this reduced me (and a lot of others!) to feeling like a beginner. I was too tired to focus and didn’t have the strength to get myself out of mistakes so ended up running down sections. Not the best end to a day but that’s all part of the challenge!

I woke up to day 6 after a bad night sleep in the tent somewhat saddened that the adventure would be soon over but also looking forward to not riding a bike! We were now in the Les Contamines / Mont Blanc area and I was blown away by the scenery. We spent the day riding in the shadow of Mont Blanc with closeup views of stunning glaciers. Once again the trails were awesome but tiredness was taking over. I was in survival mode having to slow down as my fried brain was unable to process the trail fast enough to make the quick decisions needed to ride at speed, strength to hold the bars and pull the brakes was also lacking and a 1000m climb to the 2nd stage didn’t help. The last stage was pretty special, we took a furnicular normally not allowed for bikes, up to the bottom of the glacier on Mont Blanc and then raced down 1200m to the bottom of the valley. Once again we got girls train going and somehow extra energy reserves (and the thought of a cold beer at the bottom) kicked in as we raced flat out through dusty corners and fast rock gardens to the finish line.

Overall an absolutely awesome week. Every day had you pushing your comfort zone, be it through the long transition climbs or surviving racing blind down long and technically challenging trails. In the end it was more the mental fatigue that I struggled with than the physical, staying 100% focused for 10-15 minutes, 6 times a day is utterly exhausting. Camping out in the mountains for a week, doing nothing but eat, sleep and ride was a brilliant escape from normal life and it was hard to burst the bubble and come back to reality. Going with my brother Eóin and a bunch of friends from Zürich made it great fun but it was also brilliant to meet and ride with similarly minded, fast people from all over the world. Surviving the challenge and the buzz it brought made dragging ourselves out riding in sub-zero temperatures on dark winter evenings all worthwhile, it’s not an event to be underestimated and the fitter and stronger you are the more you can enjoy it.

I race on my Banshee Rune and couldn’t have been happier with the bike. I didn’t have a single issue with the bike the whole week, it got me out of multiple sketchy situations, gobbled up rocks and roots, got me a reputation for nailing switchbacks (its the bike not me!) and generally took any abuse I could throw at it. Thanks to Magma Bike for getting it running perfectly before the race.

Already considering next year and planning the next adventure as an antidote to coming back to earth with a bump…

Thanks to Mick Kirkman and Ronan Duggan for the photos.

Deep in the French speaking Swiss Jura there is a tiny village called Mervelier surrounded by innocent looking little limestone hills. The place is the unexpected home to Magma Bike the Swiss Banshee distributors, and JUride a bunch of incrediley passionate trail builders. In the woods behind the village this small group of passionate guys have been busy constructing a network of mountain bike trails, the easiest of which would challenge most good riders. The skill and knowledge put into these trails has to be seen to be believed, steep sections drop into perfectly formed catch berms, incredibly technical lines have been picked out through the rocky outcrops of limestone, off-camber traverses built up to hold your bike. People building most of the rubbish motorway style goober friendly shite you find in the Swiss Alpine resorts could learn a thing or two by coming here.

The race itself was mental. I didn’t have time to practice most of the trails so rode a lot of it blind, and quickly realised neither my body or mind were recovered enough from the Trans Savoie to go full gas into a race. Too late! Never the less I found myself riding things that if I had have had chance to stop at the top and look, there is no way I’d have gone down. Sometimes it was the sheer length and steepness that was the challenge, other times the sharp rugged limestone rocks littering the trail provided a huge technical challenge.  I had a massive stack on one near vertical long chute where i didn’t turn in time and went hurtling down the hill ending up with a massive dead leg, which left has me hobbling around like an idiot ever since.

In between the sketchy bits it was incredible fun. Deep loam, incredible tacky grip, switchback and catch berm gallore. The way the trails are built means you are able to get down things which on first look are super steep and scary. There was very little pedaling in the stages but with 1900m climbing over 26 km it was a big day out. The stages got progressively harder, culminating in Delerium, a track which scared even some former world cup downhill riders and left me so physically and mentally fried that I was taking breaks along the way to compose myself before the next technical onslaught!. Overall I was happy to survive and finish 2nd to the incredibly fast top 10 EWS rider Melanie Pugin. I wouldn’t like every race to be this tough but its great to push your comfort zone from time to time! 

The race was part of Juride Days, a bike festival which brought people from miles around. Also behind the village is a bike park with some huge dirt jumps and north shore which was at the centre of the race village. Back-flips and 360s were the order of the day for a best trick contest, there was a DJ, live music, food and a party late into the night. The contrast between people and lifestyle here and that in Zürich is amazing and its worth a visit for that alone. The guys involved are some of the most friendly, open, passionate (and crazy) people you can ever meet and they for sure know how to ride bikes. 

The race was the first of the Helveti’ Cup, a mini 4 race series in the French speaking part of Switzerland. Great to finally see some racing here, looking forward to the rest!

There is always the danger of early season over enthusiasm and we got caught out here with a hour of hiking through knee deep snow with bikes on our backs in Davos. The descent was worth it though!

It was even nice to get out on the road and do some big mountain rides in the sun. A day on Furka and Grimsel passes have to be some of the most dramatically stunning rides around (just be prepared to share the road with millions of motorbikes, it makes you appreciate the peace and quiet of trails!). Hairpin after hairpin surrounded by huge cliff faces, waterfalls, glaciers and lakes. Getting wild sprinting back down the hill at 80 kmph is of course awesome too!

This one was a big adventure ride near Flumserberg, a small ski resort an hour from Zürich. With no lift access for bikes there was a 2.5 hour climb up steep ski pistes and technical rocky singetrack up to an isolated pass at 2300m. A super steep, technical, rocky descent made it worth while before some more climbing to some of the best loamy trails ever hidden in the woods lower down.

Next up racing in the European Enduro Series at Reschenpass in Austria at the weekend…

Firstly the trails were awesome. Carrick offered so much variety within the 7 stages, there were dusty sections where you could have been in Spain, steep gnarly rocky sections to challenge the best of riders, some good auld Irish schlomp, loamy corners, xc pedalling, pumptrack style whoops, jumps, dh tracks, everything was there. There was enough of a challenge there but above all the kind of riding that brings a smile to your face at the end of each stage. The effort and passion put into building the trails was evident and is what made all the difference.

Come race day the crowds  took the experience to another level. It was insane, I’ve never experienced anything like it! How ever many thousand people were out on the, the noise levels and rowdyness had the effect of doubling the numbers. The atmosphere was electric, the feeling of burning legs, screaming lungs or an apprehensive brain were all numbed by the cheers and encouragement (Huge thanks to anyone shouting my name, tunnel vision mean I probably didn’t recognise you but it still helped!). To see mountain biking becoming more mainstream in Ireland is amazing, to show the trails and the passion to all the foreigners and to see them all so shocked and impressed was even better and Greg crossing the line to take the win and the explosive atmosphere that followed was the icing on the cake.

Huge congratulations to all the organisers for pulling off bringing such a big event to Ireland and doing such an amazing job of it. Fingers crossed it’ll be back next year!

My race went ok, I rode everything fairly well, pushed hard when I could, coped with the distance fine, had no major issues or crashes. Overall though too steady and safe, the level in the EWS is too high for riding averagely, more risks need to be taken and limits have to be pushed. Lesson learnt, time to get more wild on the bike!

In the few days after I enjoyed some great riding in the Dublin mountains with friends, a lovely freezing cold sea swim, plenty of recovery pints of Guinness, lots of coffee. Any jobs going for architects in Dublin yet…?!

My first race of the season was the Cannondale Enduro Tour in Belfort, France. Unfortunately my new bike was delayed arriving so I raced on my hardtail with a 140mm fork, no dropper post and 10 gears! It was actually great fun just slightly slower than normal, but it was the lack of a dropper post nearly killed me. The trails weren’t particularly technical but really physical race with each stage having at least one 30-40 second fireroad sprint, I managed to stand up for all of them but it left my legs exploding with lactic dropping into the next section of trail and my quads were burning for a few days afterwards!

The last stage involved descending from the top of an old castle, down through the brick vaults with tunnels, narrow passages and flights of steps before hitting a steep sketchy shoot into the town centre. Awesome! I finished 7th, happy enough given the bike.

In fact I’ve been honing my skills on the hardtail all winter since my enduro bike is cleaned up and ready to sell.  Since March the weather has been at times amazing and we’ve done a good job of avoiding snow by developing a knack of hunting out south facing slopes for some awesome riding in places you would expect to be only able to ride in summer. I’ve had some full body batterings riding rocky trails chasing the lads on proper bikes and a full-sus will feel like the ultimate luxury when the new one arrives!

After a while darkness, grey skies, millions of layers of clothing, rides where meter deep snow meant more time spent going over the bars than going forward, and the novelty of variety began to wear off and all I wanted to do was ride a bike properly. So at the end of February we drove 5 hours south to Finale Ligure for a weekend to ride in the dust, swim in the sea and eat icecream. A solution that solves all problems. Since then the benefit of a few years Swiss riding experience has paid off and learning to hunt out the south facing slopes has meant getting a good bit of riding done on real trails, sometimes even up in the Alps.

Not so stoked to be back in snowy wet cold Zürich

Spent all of the next day dreaming of mountains!

Day 1 – 4 Stages, 50km, lots of rocks 

The first day was definitely the more technical, beginning with stage one being one of the hardest to ride smoothly. There was nothing particularly scary but the trail was full of really tight, steep and rocky corners that were really hard to ride let alone race at high speed. It was a fun track though, some high speed sections through the trees full of rocky drops and layers of thick dust which had built up with hundreds of riders training on the course. I felt I rode ok, got cleanly down one tricky steep section where I’d headbutted a tree the day before and had plenty of ragged wheel drifting moments that I managed to hold on to. I messed up an easy corner though and lost a good 10 seconds getting going again.

Normally at the bottom of the stage there is time to exchange stories with other riders, have a drink or a bit to eat etc but this time we charged out of the stage gasping for breath and it was straight into a nasty hot hairpin road climb up to stage 2. I normally have no problem with transitions even when others struggle but this time I arrived with 7 minutes to spare, just time to catch my breath, change helmets, neck a gel. Stage 2 was more flowy, fast and rocky up the top with a couple of short climbs before dropping into some fun swoopy switchbacks.

From there it was another hot road climb followed by a technical singletrack up to stage 3, my favourite of the day. The start was fast, full of jumps and drops before the trail turned up with a short cyclocross style running section and a small amount of pedaling. After that it was extremely physical with nothing but rocks. Some tricky tight switchbacks, some big rock gardens and at the end a high speed blast down a very rough ancient cobbled path to the finish at an old farmhouse where the owner was busy decanting his wine and cutting the grass, ignoring the chaos that was going on around him.

The climb to stage 4 was a killer. Luckily i’d done it before so had an idea of how far I had to go but the time we had was very tight and the blazing sun made it even harder. I had to stop part of the way up as my legs started to cramp and once again had only a few minutes to recover at the top. This felt like marathon racing and enduro bikes are not made for that stuff!

I was somewhat apprehensive about stage 4, it began flowy, fast and fun before dropping into the loosest trail I’ve ever ridden. It was steep and full of lines, ruts and loose corners, which required full commitment and concentration to ride and got scarier the faster you went. The views of the sea were stunning but I hadn’t managed to ride the steep section in one go in practice and was hoping that adrenaline would get me down on the day. It did but only just! Halfway down the most sketchy part my legs started to cramp up and unable to control the bike properly I had to slow down. That was easier said than down, my arms where so tired I could barely hold the bars and arm pump made breaking painful. I started shouting at myself “look ahead, stay loose, ride it you bender” to try and stay focused. I was an absolute mess and the noisy supporters lining the track must have thought I was nuts but I got to the bottom in one piece and without any crashes. Delighted!

It wasn’t over though, there was a flat 10km pedal back into town. One the way the cramps came back and I literally couldn’t pedal, couldn’t get off the bike and was screaming with pain. I stopped to stretch it out but could only afford two minutes or I’d have missed the cut off time. I managed to get going and ride along screaming with pain and fighting tears as every so often my legs went into further spasms. I just made it back where there was finally chance to chat to the other girls and it turns out half of us were suffering similar problems. Hot weather, hard fast riding and not enough salts were the problem so I spent the evening necking electrolytes and eating bananas to try and recover for the next day.

Day 2 – 2 Stages, 45km, 20km/1200m wakeup climb

Today started with a 20km road climb with the poor enduro bikes protesting all the way up. Luckily the times were more generous today so there was time for a chat and a laugh on the way up and a break at the top where it was a lot cooler. Stage 5 was a short one full of wide open swoopy corners through the beach forest. Somehow my brain had forgotten about the many short leg snapping climbs in between though and there seemed to be a lack of connection between my brain which was saying go fast and my legs which refused to respond. The whole thing felt sluggish but it turned out to be one of my fastest stages.

After another climb and hikeabike there was only stage 6 to go but it was a monster. Almost 20 minutes of absolute flat out trails that at times felt more like xc than enduro. The top section was open and fast and lower down became rocky at times but nowhere near as much as yesterday. It seemed as if the climbs had doubled in length since practice, after every fun section of descent there was an eyeballs out pedal before you dropped straight into more switchbacking corners that required full composure. Luckily my legs woke up a bit after the first stage and I rediscovered some xc style enjoyment of self punishment to get my best stage time. It was high 5s and whoops of delight all around at the bottom as everyone was visibly delighted to survive the weekend’s challenge and we blasted back to Finale for sea swimming, pasta and gelato.

Overall a brilliant experience and a challenge I’m happy to have got through in one piece, finishing 26th on the day and 27th in the EWS overall (results here). The trails were amazing fun and at times very difficult to race, the transition times on day one were a bit too much but I guess it is the World Series and the top riders have to be challenged. With hot sun, warm sea, good food and amazing coffee, Finale is the ultimate place for an end of season race.

Now time for a break, I don’t want to look at a bike for a while but motivation will be easy to find this winter – the next time the EWS is in Europe it will be in Ireland!!! wahoooo.