3rd time lucky at the Strathpuffer

My 3rd time at the strathpuffer, the 2 before both ended in failure 1st one due to a mechanical and 2nd due to being lazy and weak. Me and Shaun had taken it upon ourselfs to ride paired and give it our best crack. We took the van, a caravan a spare bike each, lots of clothes and our own mechanic/chef (Mike).
The fire road was covered in ice, rumours were going round that ice tyres werent needed, i disagreed so sent Mike out on a lap the night before, he came back agreeing with me so we put our ice tyres on. Shaun was doing the run and the 1st lap, he came through after the run in the top 20 and sped up the fire road climb as i went back to the caravan to change into my cycling gear. At the 25 minute mark i was at the start finish line waiting ready to race, everyone was taking bets on who was going to come through after the 1st lap in 1st, a few names were mentioned Alex glasgow or one of the square wheel riders, I heard cheers as the 1st rider came down the final decent only to see Shaun coming through in 1st with a massive lead over everyone else in our category.

                                            Waiting for shaun on the 1st lap

                                             Shaun coming through in 1st

Wicked we swapped the chip over and shot off, I was in 1st and was going to give it my best shot. The ice tyres were the best decision ever it was so slippy and the grip i was getting on the ice was unreal. My lap went well and i came back to the finish line in 38 minutes still in 1st place overall. We kept on gaining time on 2nd place and soon had a 25 min gap on them.We decided to slow down as we didnt want to blow up from trying to hard.

                                            Giving it hell up the fire road

The ice was slowly melting on the course but we kept our ice tyres on they werent to draggy and really helped on the icy parts. Mike was busy all the time, making food, force feeding me, making drinks and also doing bike maintance, he washed the bikes every lap and was changing pads, gear cables ect, on one lap he even swapped my wheels over to my top fuel swapped the cassette fitted a light bracket seatpost mudguard and then set the brake calipers and the gears up in the 30 minute rest i had, the guys a hero.
I had a few bad spots in the race like you do in these kind of crazy races mainly due to me not wanting to eat or drink but managed to keep my times from going over the hour which kept me happy. We lapped 2nd place half way through the race and carried on gaining time on them. Shaun and mike got interviewed by privateer magazine in the early hours of the morning while i was on a lap so that should be good to have read of when its out.
I finished the last lap just 30 seconds after the 24 hours with it being our 30th lap, we had won i was well happy, did a interview for the tv straight after the race and was so tired cant even remeber what i said. Really enjoyed it and got loads of prizes to.

                                                   Just finshed the last lap

                                           Team cooksons on the podium

Proper hard race, wore through 12 sets of brake pads, 3 gear cables, snapped a seat collar, broke a seatpost, blew a damper in a fork and lost a few studs out the ice tyres between us. gps recorded 96 miles each and well over 10,000 feet of climbing. Will i be back next year? I dont know im stupid enough to be.