Singletrack Issue 127 | Keeping track of time at the Trans-Provence

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The flow of time

Some time later. It could be another day. There is such an intensity to Trans-Provence that when the dust settles and we reflect over a beer each evening, our memories of the day are jumbled, with huge gaps. Entire stages disappear from our personal timelines, only to return with the kind of prompts like ‘that was the one with the dilapidated house, the funky shaped rock and the trail that dropped through with those sick turns before the janky rocky section’. Given that we struggled to recollect the previous few hours, forgive me if this tale doesn’t flow chronologically. Instead, it is an honest reflection of a single week. The heat and the stress and the joy and the pain. The friendships, the laughter and the tears. Winners, but no losers. 

Moments in a timeless landscape

The afternoon is stretching into early evening and we are sweeping the trail. Timing duties done for the day, we follow the last riders as they make their way higher and higher above the Grey Earth near Valberg. Threatening clouds loom above us, as dark as the shale rock that we are hikeabiking up. Huge cumulonimbus, mustard tinged, bristling. We have been hunted by the echoes of thunder all afternoon, and finally the storm is catching us up. Fat raindrops stain the ground, we pull waterproofs on just as spots become downpour, fabric dragging against sweat-covered bare arms. Marble-sized hail pelts us as we get to the top of the penultimate stage – the tail markers having already disappeared down, fleeing the weather.

No such luxury for us as we gather up tape and the start timing box, stuffing everything in packs as quickly as we can. Splashing down the now stream, we lose ourselves in the riding for a corner or two, before hopscotching our fellow sweepers and gathering in a sign or tape, returning race course to anonymous track within an hour of the last competitor passing down it. Part of what makes Trans-Provence so special is the temporary nature of what we are doing. The trails have existed for centuries, but for a blink of an eye they are lined with red and white tape with all the supporting infrastructure inherent to that. 

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Long days

Not much more than an hour from the bottom of the stage, we experience an impossible change in terrain. The contrasts across the whole week were incredible, but understandable when you view the scale of the distance travelled. The micro-level changes constantly surprised though. The next valley, or other side of the mountain would present wildly differing geology and features.

The storm might have passed, but we thunder down the final trail of the day. Chalky white bedrock, deep and dusty hairpin turns. ‘Feel Good Hit of the Summer’ by Queens of the Stone Age plays on loop in my head. “Nicotine, Valium, Vicodin, marijuana, ecstasy and alcohol… c-c-cocaine” as clouds of white dust explode in each corner. I squint through the non-narcotic powder thrown up by the rider in front. “Nicotine, Valium, Vicodin”… STOP. Sign. Tape. “Nicotine, Valium… c-c-cocaaaiiinnee.” I feel intoxicated by the whole experience, living a few turns as a hero. Drifting, surfing, playing – aware that this is work and there is still a long way to go. Backing off for a turn or two, then opening the taps because it is too damn good not to.

We regather at the bottom. It’s well gone 8pm. For the first time in the day both sweepers and all four mountain staff are reunited. Sometimes there’s constant excited chatter… today, it will come, but only after the first beer has passed our lips. Stoke levels are no less high, but the enormity of the day leaves us shell-shocked. We cruise as one down the road to find hydration. Tired. Elated. 

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Some holiday.

An alarm beeps in our shared hotel room. Four o’clock in the morning. Four o’clock in the f*cking morning. “Some holiday!” mumbles Toby. I can tell you this with absolute certainty, as that’s what he says every morning at this time. We laugh at the sheer dumbass predictability of it all, too tired to resist. It’s a day… a midweek day. Let’s say it’s Wednesday: Day Four of Trans-Provence 2019. It’s the last time I’m going to talk about specific days. They are genuinely even less meaningful now than they were then. Time is measured by arbitrary events, places passed through, conversations had and snapshot views. So, I’ve had to Google this, but Day Four means we’ve woken up in Valdeblore… a stunning, tumbledown village tucked high up in the Alpes-Maritimes. 

It’s the fourth morning we’ve done this, and the overnight oats we prepped too few hours ago stick in my throat. UHT milk (Cow Dust™ – with credit to Sam Needham) doesn’t help matters. We sit on the edges of the beds in our shared room, half dressed in Lycra, shovelling the fuel into unwilling stomachs. I flick through the map for the day, and we sort our packs. As well as the usual ‘big day out’ supplies, we each carry tens of routing arrows, course tape, staple guns, trail saws and timing boxes. The whole lot is heavy enough that I let out an involuntary groan as I sling my pack over my shoulders, and drag my overnight duffle bag behind me. Still-soggy-from-the-storm-yesterday shoes click-click down the wooden stairs of our hotel. Five am, and we stand in the cool mountain air, waiting for our taxi driver: Ash Smith, Mr Trans-Provence, visionary, plate spinner extraordinaire, route planner, utter bastard, itinerologist, genius, somewhere in the middle? Shortly after, we bundle into CoolBus number 18, and enjoy a cheeky lift to the top of Stage 13. For a change, we can earn a little free height in comparison to the 90 or so racers who will be leaving their campsite in a couple of short hours. 

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The Last Original Alpine Mountain Bike Rally.

What’s Trans-Provence? A quick explanation. First run in 2009, TP is the self-titled ‘Original Alpine Mountain Bike Rally’. Each year it has run from the jagged-peaked mountains of Haute Provence down to the Mediterranean coast. The race takes place over six days, moving from point to point each night – a huge tented village collapsed as soon as the last rider has set off, and re-erected in time for the first riders at their destination. There are four timed enduro stages each day; the racer with the quickest time over those stages wins. In between the timed sections are varied transition stages – anything from hours of hikeabike through to wild, exposed descents too risky to run a stage on. There’s the odd vehicle uplift thrown in, to keep the descent to ascent ratio as generous as possible. This is enduro at its purest. Blind racing: no practice runs, few route cues, the minimum of taping and signage to keep racers on course. Each stage is predominantly downhill, but they vary from a few short kilometres to energy sapping longer tracks. Technicality ranges from ‘a bit spicy’ to ‘well bastard tricky’. It’s the kind of riding that is so absorbing that you lose your sense of place mid-stage. Occasionally, as I pause to collect in tape or signs, I look back up trail to see the actual consequences of failure. The reality is always that I’d rather not have known. 

Oh. One more thing. This is the last ever Trans-Provence. A decade on, Ash has decided to draw a close to an era. And he’s keen to go out on a high. Ninety per cent new trails to race on, a new route and some of the longest days ever included. Back to back to back, and repeat.

Who doesn’t love some stats?

The simplest of concepts: a ride from the mountains to the sea using old routes linking remote villages – on which farmers use packhorses to carry goods to trade (hence the infamous donkey race logo). Anything but simple in practicality. Here’s Trans-Provence in numbers:

Trail scouting and clearance – Ash takes pride in finding lost trails for the journey. These lost trails tend to need a bit of opening up before they are rideable, let alone raceable.

Four route markers – who ride a couple of days ahead of the race, signing up to 61km of trail each day.

Four mountain staff – Toby, Ross, Julia and me. We set off before the riders and check the signage. Add more where it is vague: this is most important on timed stages where missed corners or cut-lines can make all the difference. Place a start timing box at the top of each stage – one of us waits at the bottom, while the others continue on, until the last one reaches the bottom of the fourth stage of the day. We get the pleasure of being first on the mountain, last off. 

Sweepers – Bry and Matt. They follow the riders, removing all signage as they go, leaving no trace that the race has been through other than tyre tracks. As they reach the bottom of a stage, they join in with sweeping duties. 

Doctors – Mike and Brice ride each day, patching up the scrapes and worse.

Camp staff – Putting up Decathlon tents. Taking them down. Unloading bags, Loading them. Doing all the other jobs that you don’t realise need doing – also help to serve the free beer each day. It’s not in anyone’s interest to cross them. 

Kitchen staff – breakfasts, lunches and dinners for the hungry riders (and the rest of the crew), is no easy task, but the kitchen staff creat some amazing dishes. Filling and tasty. 

Timing – Jon. Turning the raw downloaded data into a results sheet each day. 

Lunch – also Jon. If that’s not enough, he bosses the lunch stop, manning tubs of salad, sweets and a coffee machine that must have seen a year of use in one long week.

Uplift staff – a core of CoolBus drivers, boosted by others, ferry the racers up at least one climb a day.

Mavic – Trans-Provence is hard on bikes. The headline sponsor provides full mechanical support for racers to keep them running. 

Media squids – photos, video, daily news stories. Six on the hill, one editing, and Pete Scullion to drive them about and try to distil a day of racing into a short press release.

Ash and Melissa – troubleshooting, logistics, keeping the racers happy, keeping the locals happy, plus all of the work that needs to take place before an event of this scale. Years of building relationships with local landowners, maintaining trails and the kind of boring admin that doesn’t make for interesting magazine stories, but keeps events ticking.

Back to where we began

Riders are coming thick and fast down the trail now. I’m no longer straining to hear them arriving, but simply trying to juggle the tasks of timing them out and making a note of each number, ticking off the stoked and disappointed as they roll through. 

The next rider appears above me on the trail, breathing hard – it’s sometimes possible to tell the quicker guys and girls, spotting their line choice, physical demeanour, or simply raw speed. Closer up though, I rarely register who it is. All I am looking for is a white square – about half the size of a credit card – attached to each racer’s right shoulder. For all the unbridled fun, all the miles ridden, all the laughs, crashes, high fives, this is why we are really here. A fumble now can cost seconds, and even for those who aren’t fighting it out for the win, a few seconds means a risk taken, a hairpin executed perfectly, the right line choice. I don’t want to deny anyone their best possible time. For the elite who have the podium in their sight, it really is that close: Marco Osborne won the men’s overall prize by thirteen seconds over the course of nearly three hours of race time. 

The racer has completed their last turn and powers out, picking up speed instantly down the steep trail. I shout “Finish!”, and look for a sign of recognition in their body language. Some ease off and roll in gently, others power through desperate to cover the ground to me as quickly as possible. The most experienced manage to combine both, whether that be power wheelying into the last possible braking point, or achieving the same result with slightly less showboating. Then there are the miscalculations…

It’s an unusual piece of hand-eye coordination to try to slap someone’s chest as they essentially ride into you. Once again, my memories are more of a collection of snapshots rather than fully formed. Sliding backwards, my timing chip beeping successfully as I get carried down the trail by a former pro-downhiller. Our eyes widened and looking at each other, waiting for one another to fall; breaking out into manic laughter as we eventually grind to a halt a metre or two lower than where I started. 

It’s always about the people

Once I hear the beep, I relax and make eye contact – often to be greeted by a surprised “Hi Tom!”. Both racer and timer freed of their roles, shocked at how focused they were. At the start of the week there are familiar faces. Friends, returning racers, the Big Names. By the end, I know most. Some are quiet, others’ emotions fluctuate with their perceived performance. Many hang out for a while at the bottom of the trail, waiting for mates to finish, taking some time to regather, or just enjoying the atmosphere. I welcome the company as I zone in and out of conversations in-between timing duties. A makeshift pit normally forms somewhere nearby as flat tyres and worse are repaired. No one fixes a bike by themselves. There are offers of help from all who are close by. It’s just one example of the spirit of camaraderie between racers. The same story plays out throughout the week – new riding buddies, ice creams and beers bought for each other, spare parts shared.

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Fini

Our team of six: Toby, Ross, Julia, Bry, Matt, Me. Mountain staff and sweepers, we bounce down the steps to Menton seafront, wiggle our way through roadworks (welcome to the city!) and finally arrive at the finish. Ninety bikes are piled not so neatly on the promenade. Ninety riders, plus all the crew are piled not so neatly around them. Beers are thrust into our hands. They don’t really touch the sides. We are torn between finding another and scrambling down jagged rocks to the sea for the swim we have been fantasising about all day. In the end beers and socialising wins out for a little longer. There are too many friendly faces not to want to share the very last time this will happen. 

A quick splash later, and we sit drip-drying while the prize ceremony takes place. I take time to look around and try to take in the moment. There’s a raw emotion – a real sense of something special coming to an end. We share the overwhelming feeling of good fortune to have played our own parts, to have been there. Weeks on, as I reflect, it’s just as hard to describe this event as ever.

What’s in a name?

Its beauty is in its simplicity. Its logistically nightmarish, navigationally challenging, huge scale, organisationally complex simplicity. There isn’t a single person working on Trans-Provence who could be done without. There isn’t a single rider who hasn’t contributed to the atmosphere and spirit of the event. It wouldn’t be the same race without the particular mountains and trails of the area. I wonder whether I would have had the same experience if I was racing rather than working. It’s an easy answer: I clearly wouldn’t. Do I wish I was racing? There were times that I did. Equally, there were times I was thankful that there was no time pressure at all to get down a piece of trail that needed my full toolkit of modest skills just to clean. I’m more than content to have MTN on my race plate rather than a number.

Were it not for this, I wouldn’t have seen the sun rise over Col des Champs, wouldn’t have got to pause mid-stage, time and again, and take in the beauty of where I was, wouldn’t have got to feel like part of a team for the week. 

Talking to the kitchen team, or the media – few wanted any other role than the one they’d got. Each took something out of it. Something greater than participation… a sense of being part of a larger thing, helping to make it happen. It’s a story replicated in bike events across the world. The dedication of a small group of people makes these things happen. The vision of one or a few leads to a truly special thing. There’ll be a big gap in the calendar next year. I’ll even miss the early starts.

The Cow Dust™ can do one though. 

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