The Strathpuffer Challenge itself began at 10 am on Saturday with a Le Mans style running start to the bikes. The weather through the day was actually pretty good and Baz took first turn for his team, "The Dark Destroyers", fondly so named with the thought in mind that they would destroy the opposition in the hours of darkness!
Darkness itself started to arrive soon after 3.30 pm and about 7 pm the weather began to deteriorate with the wind rising and rain beginning to fall. Baz's first lap was slightly disastrous as he took a wrong turning and ended up on the local golf course! However he made up for this with the fastest lap of their total next time out. Through the day they were lapping the 6.5 mile course in times of 45 to 50 minutes but as darkness fell and the weather got worse the lap times dropped to nearer 60 minutes. The decision was taken that from roughly midnight they would do 2 laps each to enable the rest of the team to get some sleep when they were off, the Strathpuffer obviously got word of this and decided everyone had had it too easy! The wind got up to gale force on the exposed stretches and it started to snow for good measure which had a marked effect on the lap times, they dropped to 60 minutes plus! But to their credit the team carried on through the night with only one of them being forced to cut short a lap with a bout of sickness. With the return of daylight the wind dropped and the sun came out again and before we knew it the last lap was being done. The team completed 25 laps in the 24 hours of nonstop riding and actually looked good for a few more!
1 comment:
Well done to the whole team, including the "manager/mechanic/mentor" It was certainly some challenge!You all must be slightly mad.
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