Ful-On Tri - Race Reports (Blogs)

On January 14-15th I was flying the Ful-On Tri flag at the Strathpuffer 24hr mountain bike race held at Strathpepper (see what they did there), about half an hour north of Inverness. I entered as a pair with Anthony - my usual 2 day team mate. We'd originally planned to enter a 4 man team but most folk seemed reluctant to commit to doing a 24 hour race in Scotland in January. How hard could it be... As it turned out, quite, although nowhere near what it could have been. It turned out to be a cracking weekend as we were so lucky with the weather - we went expecting rain or snow but instead it was clear skies throughout which just made the trails icy and your chain freeze! The course was a mix of forest tracks, technical singletrack, and ankle deep mud that zapped every last bit of energy. We took turns riding about 3 hours each and keeping a steady 'enduro' (read: slow) pace for the whole 24 hours, putting in a total of 19 laps and placing us the 4th Male Pair. I should have squeezed in at least another lap,...