Registration only took a minute and I picked up a wrist band (to allow me to just help myself to food at the rest stops & technical support during the ride), a number plate and a branded record bag… I was half expecting a water bottle to be fair but the bag’s pretty useful as all my kit’s filthy and I was planning on using my Camelbak for hand-luggage. Now I don’t have to stick my laptop into a muddy bag! Wahoo!

So the PDS route itself was massive and I had hoped to complete the whole thing as it was our last day so I started as early as possible and planned to take every opportunity to refuel and re-hydrate on the lifts to save a bit of time.

Around 2000 people were taking part on the opening day, starting off from a number of different towns in the region to reduce bottlenecks on the trails, I had hoped to keep ahead of the main pack starting from Les gets to start with but by the time I got into Morzine the cue for Le Super Morzine lift was 30mins long. There was nothing I could do about so resigned to soaking up the morning sun and the sights whilst listening to a bit of music.

Once off of the top of this lift the crowds quickly dispersed due to a quick descent into a climb and for the rest of the day I rode with the same few groups of people riding at a similar pace, we overtook each other every so often on climbs with a friendly nod or a hastily shouted ‘Merci!’ if overtaking on the descents.

The route varied loads and took in long flowing single-track that wove through beautiful alpine meadows, a 4X track in Chatel that had me grinning like a lunatic, climbs that made me dizzy (must be the thin air again?), rocky trails that wound round the side of a Swiss mountain in the clouds (pretty terrifying as I only had <10ft of visibility!) and a fire road that I hit at 55kph whilst dodging mini-boulders and jumping drainage ditches (also pretty scary).

The route map can be viewed here and I won’t go into detail on each section as we’d both be here all day. I missed out the additional section as I think I’d have been too tired to ride properly and end up crashing towards the end. After a week’s riding my body was starting to feel worn down so I took the sensible option of taking the climbs at an easy relaxed pace and conserving my energy for the descents! I personally think this worked really well as I managed to have the best day’s riding of the whole trip today!

The last descent into Morzine was my favourite run of the whole trip – a 30 minute trail starting in meadow overlooking the valley – leading into a tight wooded section with huge root step-downs and jumps on really loamy soil that gripped beautifully, next into a rocky gully with big slabs that were perfect for wall-rides and gap-jumps with sweet, almost natural, berms that just kept going and going and going!

I could see that we were getting close to town and the gradient started to level off a bit which was a huge relief - my braking fingers were on the verge of seizing up after a weeks’ worth of riding, and I swear my brakes were hotter than the sun so was really glad to cruise into town and sit down with a (free) beer obviously just to cool my aching hands on!

This was also the first day of the trip that I didn’t have a crash or ride off the trail so was really really happy that I’d managed it all and hadn’t done anything silly. Don’t get me wrong – I did come pretty close to having a few nasty offs but managed to hold it together just enough to ride out of them. I am positive that the bike took a bit more abuse than Trek may have intended but nothing broke (that wasn’t really easily fixed). I’m not looking forward to unpacking my bike as I will be having to strip it down, re-grease absolutely everything (thanks mud), have the brakes bled, pads replaced and the rotors replaced (because I burnt one) but it was all well worth it!

If I were to do this again I’d ride with a few mates (Dan’s ticket was up for grabs but there were no takers in our chalet so I rode on my own), take a bit more food to snack on between food stations and carry an extra (extra) layer. The lifts were above the cloud level at some points so it got pretty bloody cold – I wore a riding jersey, windproof gillet, waterproof jacket, DH gloves beanie and a buff and was fine on the lifts but I don’t think it would have been enough if I’d have had to fix a puncture. A long-sleeved riding jersey/fleece would have been great as an emergency layer. A bit of local knowledge would have helped to avoid a couple of the fire roads but on a route that long it’d be hard to avoid them totally.

The PDS event was really well organised and had a great feeling to it. No trip times were being recorded so the vibe was really relaxed and everybody I shared a lift with was really friendly. Technical support from a few local shops as well as Mavic long the way was a great idea but thankfully I didn’t need any, the food stops were well spaced out with plenty there for everybody so there was no mad rush or scrum for anything that I saw. The music was an eclectic blend of Euro-pop, house music and hip-hop keeping everybody’s spirits up/ears bleeding at the food stations.

Many thanks to the organisers of the PDS for all the hard work taken to ensure the event ran perfectly!

Our final day in Morzine was due to end with a massive dinner and a few beers but an email from the company organising our ski transfers, explaining that due to a broken down van they’d be picking us up 2 hours earlier than planned, meant that we had to clean down our bikes and kit and finish our packing that night before we could relax.

On the plus side it meant that the following morning was pretty much stress free - until we saw how much food in Geneva airport cost!!!! Ouch.