Tuesday, January 26, 2016

24 Hours of Strathpuffer Mud.



We were back again for the Strathpuffer 24 hour mountain bike race. This year, Tom's second, instead of freezing temperatures and snow, we had a thaw, and that meant there would be mud.

 We were both riding Alpkit's new Sonder Bikes. I was on their carbon fat bike, the Vir Fortis, and Tom was riding their 650B+ Transmitter.



Other than enjoy ourselves our goal was to improve on the 10 laps that Tom achieved last year. Tom was noticably stronger this year, and by 1 AM the 10 laps were done. We decided then to grab some sleep. 3 hours later, refreshed we were back out there notching up a few more laps.

With 13 laps done we checked to see if there was time for a 14th, but we wouldn't have made it back by the 11am cut off. Tom was obviously tired but still had plenty of enthusiasm and miles in hs legs.

81 miles done. Tom came 58th of 104 soloists. He won a prize for being the youngest soloist, and I got a bottle of beer for being his Dad.

 

Dom Bush of Land and Sky Media was there doing some filming of us for a forthcoming Alpkit Mountain Journal Short Film, and took these great pictures below straight after the race.






Thanks to Alpkit, Exposure Lights,. Team JMC, my Wife and Daughter, Pete Gretton, Zoe and Ed Proctor for their assistance before during, and over the weekend.