Offroad racing 'fun'.

As some of you may have heard from my pals Roberta and Graham at spin class on Wednesday night. I managed to survive the 2010 Strathpuffer 24 hour Mountain Bike Enduro Race at the weekend.

Ably assisted by the aforementioned, I skidded muddy, cold and tired to the 2nd place ladies podium and 10th soloist overall. I was surprised and delighted to do so well in the hideous conditions that changed every hour throughout the 24hours. The race of 7 mile laps began with a Le Mans start (carbon soled cycle shoes on sheet ice anyone?!) at 10 am on the Saturday. At the start, the icy compressed snow on the forestry roads which had been ploughed during the week made the metal studded tyres I had invaluable for getting any traction. The singletrack was snowy to start with in spite of long stretches of snow covered trail having been hand dug by the local cycle club to enable the event to take place. Without their efforts the lap would have been 50% hike a bike in 2 feet of powder and probably not gone ahead. An astounding effort to have this annual daft-fest go ahead just shows the enthusiasm of the local riders.


As the day wore on, the temperatures started to nudge towards +5 and 6 degrees and the ice and snow to thaw. Stretches of trail that had been easily passable if a little skiddy, became a frost heaved souffle of gravel that sucked at your tyres as you tried to ascend the main climb. The Slushy singletrack snatched you off line as you tried to carry momentum downhill, sometimes resulting in spectacular slides and fishtailing that only great effort and a dash of luck could prevent from becoming a huge spill. As the course softened up, I attempted a lap on my hardtail, rigged up with 1.5in Cyclocross tyres. I had hoped that the narrow knobblies would cut through the emerging mud and slush, however, the harsher ride and handling of the hardtail was going to use up too much energy for any benefit, so I went back to the 2.1 snow/ice studs on my full-suss race bike for the remainder of the race, and even they are narrow compared to the 2.35+ tyres I'm accustomed to riding off-road.

After the early laps.

During the night the entire course froze up again and presented the new challenge of riding over glazed rocks and frozen-slush ruts. The constant bombardment and vibration of riding long distance on a technical course begins to make all the muscles of your body ache like it's bruised. One of my fellow riders described it as feeling like you'd been working a jackhammer for 24 hours. They have since coined the sensation “Vibration White-body”!


'food'!

My tactics for getting through the race were to ride for 4 hours with very short stops at transition to take on bottles and energy gels, then take a longer rest of up to half an hour to change into clean/dry kit and have some 'real' food like soup or porridge. I managed this for two stints of 4 hours, but then succumbed to the temptation of my sleeping bag and a lie down for a few hours in the late evening. I had been holding a reasonably comfortable lead in Solo Ladies for these first 8 laps but even my wonderful support team couldn't battle my reluctance to get back out into the freezing morass and I slipped to equal with my main opposition, and then because I was slow to get back into gear again I fell back half a lap into 2nd place.

A problem with my lights failing at the top of the main climb meant that gutted and cursing, I had to ride back down to transition for a replacement battery and do the whole wretched slog again and lost me another half a lap, putting my opposition into a clear one and a half lap lead. Chasing hard, I managed to catch her up the half lap on the technical sections, where my strengths lie. However her strength in climbing meant that every time I passed her on the tech, she chased me down on the forestry road and I could never fully reel her in to take back the one lap lead she had. Some swift calculations with my pit-bitches at the transition led me to decide to cut my losses and just plod on in my very comfortable 2nd place spot for a few more laps.

Night laps.
I think I would have been able to continue until the very end at 10 am Sunday, had I not tried to ride a rocky slab that had become particularly slick and come off landing on my knee caps. I don't know if anyone has ever taken a hefty knock to a bone when very cold, but believe me, it's not pleasant. Feeling sick from the adrenaline rush, I had to walk for a bit. The subsequent cooling down after working so hard and being wet with sweat meant I was quickly chilled and shivering. When I felt ok to start riding again, I found my cleats had again frozen solid with compressed snow and ice, and that I was too weak and wobbly for my usual whack of my foot on the pedal to clear them. Cue a bit of a pettit lip and a bit of a weep for a minute. There's some lonely feeling hours out in the woods in what feels like the middle of the night. I hobbled back from that lap, coasting and came to a snotty, weeping stop at the Start/Finish arena at about 6 am. Perhaps it was an omen that my race number was Number 2?

Snotty, weepy exhaustion. What a difference a babywipe makes! Snowglobe trophies, how apt!

I managed to complete 13 laps in total, with the winning lady completing 16 and coming in 8th overall. And now that I've done this race in all available team combinations; Pair, Quad and now Solo, I never, ever, EVER have to do it again!

Very impressed

Sounds like a tough race, great to read about your ride and see the pictures.

WELL DONE - or as David Duffiels would say "CHAPEAU."