Yeah. We were wrong. We needed spikes. I have ridden my bike (and pushed it and fallen off it) in all sorts of horrible conditions over the years, from minus double-digit cold and mud-caked pine plantations to axle-deep snow and blanket bogs, but I have never encountered riding surfaces as slippery as those we tried to race on at last weekend’s ice-bound, frost-blighted, freezer-burned Strathpuffer 24.
Unsurprisingly for a day-long race held in the far north of Scotland in the middle of January, the Strathpuffer already has a fearsome reputation, and this year’s event will have done that reputation no harm at all. It inevitably sells out fast, attracting hundreds of hardy riders keen to measure themselves against a testing cross-country course in sub-arctic conditions with brief stretches of thin daylight sandwiching seventeen hours of darkness. The bravest attempt a solo ride, bashing out laps alone for
The logistics of running the event in Contin Forest, which has limited opportunities for parking race support vehicles, mean that competitors really need to establish a base on site on the day before the race. For us that meant doing a nine-hour drive to Inverness the day before that, Thursday, to be on time to pick up the single parking pass allotted to our team and to get onto the course to bag a decent spot. We were carrying equipment for a number of other groups of riders, including two massive EZ-Up sh