Within minutes you were being tumble–dried through switchbacks at impossible–to–stop–speed, at which point I witnessed riders laying prone, bleeding, and generally upside down. What a start. Another climb…and then it was all over except the track accelerated with the force of gravity hinting just a touch at what was to come on the stages that followed. Ash had said this was the most cross country style stage of the whole journey. There were some relieved faces, damaged ones too.

It was only a short transfer ride to stage two, and it was a corker. A quick climb of about a minute or so saw Mark Weir carving uphill berms, impressive stuff from the Downieville champion of all time. The track then breathed in, tightened through some bushes before spiralling fiercely through switchback after switchback, but these were different, of catch and drive variety, each arc custom fitted to a medium to large wheelbase and anyone looking for fun.

Lunch followed by a sadistic climb to stage three was the second introduction to pain (for me at least) on this adventure. Haggered would have to wait, but certainly the first glimpse of energy reserves being tapped into. It finished not soon enough before a superb off–camber traverse lead to the conclusion of day one. It was worth every single second of the effort. Payback time.

It’s hard to describe exactly the feeling of exiting natural berms with what seemed like a jet engine pumping your pedals. It was relentless, and you wanted it to be – SS4 delivered. To see World Downhill Champions clearly energized form what they’d done, animated from what might be one of the runs of the week. Physically raw, gloriously rewarding, an easy day, but quite a day.

Clemensane – Dige-les-Bains

SP 5   +0m/394m

SP 6   +0m/-335m

SP 7   +100m/-637m

SP 8   +0m/-863m

After a pretty heavy 27^th birthday party the night before drinking Duvel with Mark Maurissen and our support crew for the week, Mark Valee, we hit the sack at about 12.30.

I was in for a long day for sure, waking up at 7am feeling pretty rough. Today was going to be one of the longest days of the week. We started with a shuttle in the van and I was feeling very delicate being driven up the mountain road willing our shuttle to be over. Once we got out we had a 400 metre hike through some amazing scenery towards the top where most of us had to hike, with exception of Matt Ryan who rode all the way up! Hats off to him.

SP5 was my favourite stage so far, wide open with loads of line choice, although it was quite vague in places. It was so much fun with an open rocky start picking your way through some gnarly rock sections plus a couple of tricky stream crossings.

After a small hike through a remote farmyard we reached SP6 starting with a flat pedal traverse into endless switchback mostly in the shade – a really fun trail this one, it was quite sloppy as it had a stony base under the mossy surface.

One of my highlights today was following Nicolas Vouilloz on a linking single track between SP6/SP7 – something I have not had the chance to do ever before. It was nice to watch a legend of our sport at work. From there we had a long hike onto a beautiful ridge, probably the best scenery I have seen so far! And I’m sure it won’t be the last great scenery I see.