I love Windham. im not sure if its because the place is small friendly and its back country, its like the Yeehaww of the east coast, and sometimes its nice to escape to nowhere and quietness, or because the place is known as the ‘Land in the Sky’. The town is nestled amongst miles and miles of rolling rolling, forest covered hills which give way to vast expanses of sky, there is nothing severe, jagged or impenetrable about the skyline and i can see why it is called The Land in the Sky. It reminds me of a favourite book by Michael Morpurgo: King of the Cloud Forests.

Anyways: The drive to Windham from St Anne was long and arduous, but 2 hours from winham lies Lake George, and as it was July 4th, we thought we’d stop off and join in the celebrations. Watching the fire works over the lake, and just being around Clay (porter : www.3mg.com) who was so stoked to be back in America after French Canada! haha we were all happy and mellow.

The next day we rented a boat, Stevie myself and clay hopped aboard and Gee, Affy, Browny and Pete got jet skis and off we went for a few hours, hot sun, water, boats, it was awesome and just the way to chill before the next world cup race….

Once we got to windham and found our accommodation ( the place we stayed last year wouldn’t have us back, something to do with Gee and I setting fire to his bedroom on race night i expect) we walked the track…and similar to every race track so far this year it had been somewhat groomed and ‘bike parked’ which is a real shame but understandable as they are trying to promote the place year round to ride.

Personally i love the track which surprises me as its not really as technical as i normally like, its quite short, its intense from tip to butt, with rock gaps and senders and such right off the start, its so fast too, with a lot of corners that count for every little .05 of a second, putting a run together on that track is hard work as theres so much on it, i mean its really full with things for such a short track. Some big gaps and rock hucks make it nice and scary!

However the first day practise i thought i might actually have to retire, i couldn’t ride my bike at ALL! i felt horrendous, and i couldn’t see how people could ride bits, i walked down 1 rock section, then the last rock garden i thought, fuck i cant walk this too, everyone was there looking at it so i pushed up and made myself ride it and it was fine, so i knew it was all in my head, this funny feeling, and i think a few people felt the same after st anne being so tough and such a long drive, not much rest really.

The shoulders were still so beaten up and sore, and it would take me and hour every morning to warm myself up enough to go ride, something which i have learned as a most valuable lesson.

we were also having trouble sleeping, so i decided to smash out some Co-Codamol before bedtime, which i don’t recommend but hell did it work, slept like a frog, sometimes needs must…..

Affys neck was so sore and stiff that he resorted to this wierd honey liquor, he never drinks normally so it knocked him out a treat!

The next day was completely different and i was having a lot of fun, although slowly! i remember Affy saying to me last year (who was at home then in his Halo) learn the track, not the speed, and i won last year despite all my worries, so i tried to do the same thing. i made some quite drastic changes to the geometry of my bike with mechanic polish pete, and shit the bike felt good!

Stopping trackside to whoop at the guys and pump my fist in the air, and when they return the fist pump it makes my day, Elliot Jackson got top marks!

The first day or 2 and it was quite wet, it rained intermittently which made it hard to know how fast to go, one run i tried a different line into this bog and i heard this huge whoop and Cedric comes charging top side of me thru the bog screeching with laughter, so funny i almost fell off! guys rad and makes racing so much more fun!

Sven Martin chief photographer caught the sharp end of my tongue a few times after he told me i ”had to practise quicker” i was furious and told him where to go, but secretly he had hit a nerve and i know i gotta practise faster, then the end result on sunday will be faster, but its hard to do when you scared!!

ANyway, theres this one rock gap that was called ”doom drop” last year, and i hadn’t done it yet so saturday i decided to hit it up, just like last year,before race day came around. i was scared to do it for sure, its gnarly, you send off this rock not very far but so fast and you land in a rock garden, you gotta be precise and you smash your life up. guys were wild, smashing wheels and faces galore!

Tried to follow Gee man in but by now the dust was so much i couldn’t see, so i just nailed it myself, scary. The next 2 runs i landed different place each time, only once smashing my chain guide into bits! That done, the track was dialled, i had my lines, i was confidant in them all, i just needed to speed her up now.

dream team!

Race day came and i awoke bright and early…in a good mood no less so i was stoked already! Up to the pits and it was just pete, stevie and myself there so i took the opportunity to sing whilst i warmed up which is by far my favourite race ritual.

singing Ace Of Base flat out, with the fan blowing cool air because it was that hot already, thinking about my 2 practise runs, feeling my shoulders all tapped up and safe, watching Pete readying the old girl, i felt calm, i felt happy and i felt ready. and nervous!

We always try to chill on the first practise run, just rolling down, checking things out, getting ready, and i tried to do this, but i couldn’t! i just couldn’t, i set off on a roller, found myself going faster than any other run, i hit the turns so good i whooped, hucked the rock gap at the start, drifted the lost turn like never before, it was so sick! i kept stopping on the way down and saying ‘slow down chill out’ but id set off again and it was like i just had one pace that day, and it was a good pace!

Going up for race run i was slightly quietly confidant, i knew that if i had a good run that i could win, its just that putting a ”good” run together these days was something of an anonymity!

After Mt St Anne Browny had mentioned to me that i seemed wholly unfocused at the top, and so i tried to bring pull myself together at windham. Thinking back to the good old days of 2008 before all the injuries and problems started and i believed it was possible to be invincible, i remembered my focus at the top, how i would warm up, where my mental state lay, so i tried hard to create that vibe. Even thinking back to Windham last year got me into the groove.

It surprises me again and again just how much of a mental game DownHill is, of course skill and physical fitness play a huge factor, but i believe that half of it is down to your mental state.

For some reason Windham just seems to do it for me, im not sure if it is being in America, a country that i affiliate with, or Windham being quite back country and relaxing, of the fact that the crowd there is always so vocal, it just gets me going and this year was no different.

Off the line i felt something change, something in my mind said ”you can push this 110% and its going to be ok” into the first rock section the crowd was WILD, it made me laugh out loud, boom boxes: flags: chants: bongo drums, it was such an awesome feeling having those people pressing in on both sides of the track, whooping and hollering so close to you, making me brake late, making me trust my tyres that bit more. ill go out on a limb and say my top section was one of the most perfect race runs i have done, vie never slid and pushed that hard, arriving at the middle where you send a huge road gap i got nervous and thought ”no one will ride that faster than me, i need to chill out so i don’t crash and waste that good a run” so i held back and rode on.

sitting on the hot seat watching Pugin come down i was nervous, she pulled 2 seconds back on the bottom half but it wasn’t enough and i took the win! The relief i felt was enormous, after all the injuries, after all the tears, i was stoked that i could still be up there and win, stoked to be able to win riding at 80%, stoked on life!! stoked on america and stoked to be going to whistler for 2 weeks to ride and chill out!

I must mention the Organisers at Windham, they are ALL volunteers, and they do an amazing job. So friendly, so happy to have the races there, they get really involved and just check out one of the ladies finger nails! dedication!

No other World Cup has an amateur race on friday, World Cup XC on saturday  and World Cup DownHill on sunday, with kiddies races in between. It makes for such a good vibe and atmosphere and other races could learn alot from these guys!

Well Thanks for reading. as ever i feel weird writing blogs as they always end up so ”me” oriented, but i hope that this insight into my racing life might give just 1 little girl the drive to become a professional DownHill racer, lord knows she can do it!!!

Cheers.

25 miles Northeast of Quebec lies Mount Sainte Anne.

this is a direct quote from Wikipedia “The ramparts surrounding Old Quebec are the only remaining fortified city walls that still exist in the Americas north of Mexico” this is a pretty cool fact, and reinforce Quebec, along with Porto, as one of my favourite old time cities.

The World Cup was in its 16th year at Mt St Anne, and im going to say the Peaty is the only person to have raced them all. correct me if i am wrong? second cool fact of the blog!

Mt St Anne is always the toughest track for all 3 of us, mainly consisting of alot of ”old skool” fast as hell piste sections and wide open fastness, interspersed with technical rocky sections, around 6 minutes long, its a damn hard track and we dont have nothing like it back in Blighty.

My second world cup ever here in 2005 i qualified 1st, then crashed and burned,podium 2006, missed 2007 due to injury,then 2008  i won. 2009 i missed the race due to injury, 2010 World Champs i crashed after my shoulder strength failed me. so 2011: was this going to be my first win of the season? NOPE!

I will not hesitate to admit that Mt St Anne kicked my ASS! As well as it being horrendously wet this year, so wet you couldnt ride 100 yeards without pulling a tear off, and even that didnt help! the holes were huge and it was wild wild fun!

The lay out of World Cups has changed since i last raced and now Thursday is first day of practise, this means an extra day of riding, and i was so tired by Sunday, my shoulders were sore, i couldn’t lift my arms to get a bowl out for my cereal, i could barely pull my skins on, it was pretty gnarly and i have not felt that bad since Windham last year, which was BEFORE my surgery, so i also felt pretty bummed out with that fact that they still can get so fatigued so fast. oh well.

making mudgaurds for the v3 and contour….

Race day and i did 1 practise run and holy fleck, the track is actually awesome fun, so challenging all the way down, keeping you thinking 100% to the finish, but i just didnt have the strength needed to attack the whole way down, i felt so sick at the bottom, thought i would puke, so i chiiled out and I was sat in the pits at 9am waiting for practise to finish so i wouldn’t have to do another run ( !! ) Browny rolls in and says ”are you doing the last jump?” i reply, no way. He says ”well i think you should everyone else is!” I had no idea the other girls were doing it, i hadn’t even bothered to look at it for cripes sake, because it had been SO WET all weekend, some guys weren’t even jumping it. Anyway so i jumped up and pushed up with browny to the last wood section and hit the bitch up, it was so easy but i was nervous to do it after a full 5 minutes of canadian gnar…

My race run was, how shall i say, strange. i struggled all year to get my head into the right focus and mind frame for racing, struggle to get to where i know i need to be to win, and my shoulders were almost all i could think about which is not how you should start a race. First turn i couldn’t commit and stalled, that pissed me off so much i went a bit wild and nearly crashed a lot, until i told myself to just chill out and flow, maybe slow down a bit, i had a steady run, feeling the lack of strength, until the last rock garden where i slid on a rock and because i was so tired i just pottered off line instead of controlling it and rode a few extra seconds out and then back into the line, ooooopsy!

Crossed the finish line into first but with Tracey and Florianne still to come i knew i hadn’t done enough,Pugin went into 2nd with Tracey killing it in first, she rode so good, so strong, manhandled her bike around and made me jealous! i was happy enough in 3rd, happy to have held on, happy knowing the times would be closer if i was stronger, and that is how i entered the year, preferring to not win because of a lack of strength, instead of not winning because my actual shoulders have fallen off!!

Watching the guys was so hard, so many people having bad luck, gee having to walk down with a flat and then greg crashing over the bars was hard to see, i hate it when the racing isn’t just fair and legit, it sucks so hard when the top boys aren’t all having a good run, but i guess thats racing,Aaron Gwindow kept up his winning form, but it was Josh the rat and Danny Hart who were the talk of the party, amazing to see josh final on the big dog box in 2nd! so rad.

Party was pretty dope in St Anne as always, hung out and talked about the world and life with Warner and Peaty,got some goodadvice.. those guys have been around for so long you forget how much they seen and how much they know, both of whom i would like to offer my extreme admiration too, for knowing what they want and how to get it and knowing that we need them in Mountain Biking.

chilled in the media room for few hours!: victor lucas, sven martin, john lawlor, josh rat, sambro dale, minnar.

End.

welsh boys.sushi and water = party….Al Bond, stag.