Strathpuffer 2009 - It's not all about winning!

It's not about winning...

At Exposure Lights we work hard all year round to bring more fun to night time cycling. It's always great to get reports from riders taking part in events around the country and this report from Neil and his team taking part in Strathpuffer keeps us warm at night, knowing everone of all abilities is having a great time out there with our lights.
Well done to everyone that survived another round of the Toughest 24hr MTB race in the world.

This years Strathpuffer was a much more pleasant affair than last years ice-skating exercise, sadly our team David, George, Fraser and myself Neil (Just Another Excuse to Drink Malt Whisky) could?nt take advantage of the conditions race wise, but that did'nt stop us having some fun.
The race started in its normal crazed fashion and come sunset the joysticks went on and we started to lap a few minutes slower, nowhere near as bad as the twenty minutes we slowed down last year riding by headtorches and faulty bottle-battery lights. A few laps later, however, we were dealing with some mechanical issues. This is standard for the Puffer, but we were one bike short as Dave had flown up from Brighton. Our singlespeed proved to have an ambitious gear ratio and our attempt to correct this failed had to be saved by the Kilted Spanner Man, twice. It saved the day, being ridden by alternate riders in three back to back laps completing my part in the night shift. The earlier gear ratio had taken its toll and put Frasers back out of commission so we dropped a lap. As the cold and blizzard set in George kept lapping with rapidly deteriorating forks on his king size Specialized. His lapping partner Dave got too cold to continue and retired to a mound of sleeping bags in a leaky tent. On the *bright* side, our lighting was much better than last year with Exposure Joysticks all around and an Enduro and three cell battery just for kicks. Instead of slipping into a sleep filled with anxiety dreams about the next round of dark nightmarish laps, I was listening to the blizzard hit our tent and coming up with the ultimate clothing combo to get me back out. Come "morning" (still dark) there was no chance of being competitive with two riders down, so I took the climbs easy, chatting to other riders, lending cable ties and practiced foot-out descending in snow and mud. The bar mounted Enduro spat out enough light for me to go as fast as I dared and I had the most fun laps of the race skidding through the winter wonderland. After two laps on the trot I started to cramp and tagged in George to finish off the race. We know now that the hardest race of the year is behind us and the next one can only get easier?.right?

Photo courtesy of James Robertson.