252km (23 laps) in 24hr 55min won us 36th place out of 78 quad teams – that’s in the top half of the field! Not too bad for a novice enduro team on a strict training regime of christmas turkey and beer.

We thought, having done 150k off-road in 24 hours before, that the Strathpuffer should be easy in a team of four since we’d only be riding for a quarter of the time each.  But it wasn’t!  We didn’t factor in the cold, dark, ice, slush, mud, rain and gradients that the ‘puffer throws at you.  It just grinds riders and their bikes into mush.

The winning rider did 24 laps SOLO.  We are in complete awe of this.

Overall the race was great fun in spite of the suffering.  Everyone was really friendly and the support we got from the organisers and BHF Scotland was fantastic.  Singletrack Magazine sent us up some lights to test out since we were short of equipment, which was brilliant.  Biggest thanks of all go to all our sponsors who made dragging our cold, wet, muddy arses back out of the tent for one more lap unavoidable.  Without you, we would probably have given up and gone to the pub.

So, here’s how it went.  We drove up on Friday night, got to Inverness travel lodge at about 11pm and started pre-race preparations including watching a film and drinking some whisky.  A bit slow off the mark in the morning we went to Tesco’s (boo) to grab plenty of food and a big breakfast. We arrived at the race course at 9am, an hour before the start. Andrew went off to register as the first rider while the rest of us set up camp.  There wasn’t much space left but we managed to shoehorn our giant marquee into the camp site, because there was a big patch no-one else wanted because it was so icy and slushy.  Set up continued while Andrew did the first lap, and we met him at the Arena for the change over to Andy.

By the time Andy got back with a split lip from headbutting a tree stump, our camp was almost sorted.  Andy’s a doctor so he was annoyed that he couldn’t put a stitch in his lip to keep it tidy, so a dab of superglue from the tool kit sufficed.  We had a pretty good set-up.  We pitched a tent inside the marquee for sleeping and keeping dry stuff in.  We had a big ‘kitchen’ table with all our food, a full tool kit and work stand (essential), a few chairs, and best of all a gas fire to warm up by between laps and dry things over.  In the evening we set up the human power station rig with a laptop and projector to watch movies or charge batteries.  The idea was to invite people round and ask them to donate to BHF but it never really happened.  However the Adventure Show came in and interviewed Sam in the middle of the night, and when we showed them the cinema they were flabbergasted – so we might get on the telly.

Team performance was a good effort all round.  The results are here.  Sam and Andy were both quick and consistent – if we had all managed this we’d have probably made the top 10.  Especially if we were a bit more vigilant on the change-overs, where we generally wasted at least 5 minutes a lap. Andrew had a bit of a nightmare – did our team’s fastest and slowest laps, breaking a chain half way ’round on one lap. Later he came in really late and we thought he’d had another bike problem. “How was your lap?” we asked when he got back.  ”Not bad” he said, “but I fainted on the bike, crashed, then threw up”.  Not bad at all.  Less competitive / daft people might have called it a night there but Andrew went for a wee kip then carried on.  Then his lights ran out before the end of a lap – nae luck! I was the team slow coach.  No excuses, just too many christmas beers perhaps.

The course is a mix of long fire-road climbing slog, and fun singletrack with lots of challenges, tricky rock sections and fast descents.  It’s really tiring to do at any sort of speed, and the special Strathpuffer Krypto-mud literally grinds your bike to pieces.  Brakes fail, forks collapse, and chains disintegrate every lap.  The mud is so abrasive we got through at least 10 sets of brake pads – about 100 times what their ‘normal’ wear should be!

Our bikes and equipment generally held up pretty well.  Three of us had hard tails set up for general trail riding, with big fat DH tyres.  Exactly the same bikes we use for everything, definitely not a cross-country race set-up.  The other bike had full suspension and slightly skinnier tyres but it made no odds.  The bike might make a minute or two in a lap but the half hour differences were down to fitness and reliability.

If you’re thinking about doing it,  you need a decent quality bike with lots of spare parts and the ability to repair things as you go.  Your bike will take a beating.  We managed to get decent quality lights for everyone and they were fantastic, making night riding much easier.  The pace hardly dropped in the dark.  Clothing wasn’t too much of a problem – we mostly wore jeans, trainers and a thermal layer, maybe a jacket when it was raining hard.  Staying warm between laps was – if we hadn’t had the gas fire to get warm and dry it would have been a hundred times worse.

Will we be there next year?  Maybe…