The Strathpuffer from my viewpoint

The Strathpuffer eventually arrived after a few months of fairly hard training, the last 2 or 3 weeks being particularly hard because of the deep snow and very low temperatures, but perfect conditions for what turned out to be an epic event! We drove up on the Friday late afternoon and booked into the Conon Bridge Hotel, then up to Dingwall for what can only be described as the worlds worst fish supper. Yeuch!!! Don't ever go to Rinaldis there, I would've been better eating my cycling shoes done in a batter.
After that "delicacy" it was up to Strathpeffer itself to register for the race itself and to meet a fellow contestant from Banchory Bikes who very kindly delivered what must have been about the very last ice spike tyres in the UK for Baz's bike.
After an early breakfast on Saturday morning it was up to the event itself which is actually held near the village of Contin. We had to dig a space in the snow at the side of the first fire road climb to park the car which was to be our headquarters for the extent of the race. Bit of advice here, NEVER, repeat, NEVER, do an event in the far north of Scotland in the depth of winter using a car as a cloakroom, it is possible but only JUST!!!
Anyway the race itself was fantastic. I've just remembered that I forgot to mention that due to various reasons our original four team members now only consisted of Baz and myself. After questioning our sanity for about 2 seconds we got on with it and using the strategy of taking it easy we somehow or other got through the 24 hours and came in 19th out of 42 in the pairs category. Maybe not quite world beaters but when you've originally thought you were going to be in a team of 4 not too bad!
All in we probably had about 90 minutes sleep and not a very good sleep at that!
More later...........