I have never regretted buying our campervan six years ago, as on trips like this it’s just amazing. We can pull over anywhere, have a sleep, be a tourist and have a picnic, as there’s no rush to have to get to a certain place at a certain time. We took our time and after two days we passed over the Pyrenees, which was stunning, and then with 50km to go to Ainsa I hopped out of the camper and rode the last bit to Ainsa to stretch the legs after two days in the van.

I was really looking forward to the race in Ainsa as I had heard so much about the place and how great the riding was. The race venue was in the old castle sat high above the village, it was such a stunning setting. The riding didn’t disappoint either… there was so much variety, from high speed almost alpine-like feeling trails, to tight techy stuff and then moonscape barren rock ridges. It had everything. After three days of practice and a fun street race through the castle we were ready to race.

Cecile Ravanel (my nearest competitor) pushed my hard over the two days of racing and won more stages than I did, but I was never more than 2 secs back in any of the stages she won, and in the ones I won I put in some decent chunks of time. So after two long tough days, and even with the cancellation of the last stage due to a crazy rain storm, I managed to take the win by 26 seconds and further extend my lead in the series.

This year we have had three back to back races and I think it’s hard to stay feeling fresh for the second weekend, so I planned to try and have a fairly easy few days after the race in Ainsa. We took it steady and drove over two days and then I had a good road ride once I arrived in Finale on the Wednesday. Thursday ended up being our only practice day as Friday was cancelled due to bad weather, so I ended up only doing each stage once. It was strange to spend the day before the race weekend not practicing, but I think the extra rest was going to be good for me as I definitely could feel that it was the end of the season and my body was pretty ready for a break.

The weather was pretty extreme for the lovely sunny Finale Ligure that I have only ever seen the previous four years in October. We had some serious high wind and also quite a bit of rain. It was bad enough for the race organisers to have to cancel stage 1 for racing on Saturday, leaving us with just three stages on the Saturday and two on the Sunday.

I didn’t need to win this race to win the series, I only needed to finish within the top 30 women, but now being this close I really wanted to end the season with a win. I loved the final two stages as they were up in the hills with a bit more dirt and more familiar terrain, and with the overnight rain it just made them better. I managed to claw back some time on Stage 5 and now had a lead of 10 seconds going into the final stage.

I started to feel the nerves a bit as not only was the win in sight but also my third World title. I started off pretty scrappy, getting loose and running wide on the first few turns, and then after a short steep climb I felt my bike come to a halt and stopped to see that one of my spare tubes that was taped to the underneath of my saddle had come loose and wrapped itself around my rear hub! I had to get off, back pedal and unravel it before setting off again. I could feel the race drifting from me as I slowly got the tube out of my wheel and then all I could do was push as hard as I could for the rest of the stage. I blew out one of the final turns and had to run up a short uphill and got to the finish with mixed feelings… I knew I had done enough to win my third title, but I thought I had thrown away the final race on the last stage. Somehow though I had managed to claw back enough time to win the stage, the race and the series.

Finally a huge thank you to James my fiancé, who not only has put up with me for the last nine years, but for the last three years as been my mechanic. It’s testament to his work that in three years I never had a mechanical issue or finished outside of the top 2 at any EWS race… thank you James.

It’s now time for some well deserved time off the bike, some time to reflect on an amazing year, get ready for winter and make some plans for 2016. Thanks for reading my diaries this season.