EPISODE 345: 24 hour racing with Josh Reid on Scotland's Strathpuffer

26th January 2024

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 345: 24 hour racing with Josh Reid on Scotland's Strathpuffer

SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUESTS: Josh Reid, Alfie Marsh

TOPICS:

LINKS:

https://www.the-spokesmen.com/

https://www.ternbicycles.com

https://twitter.com/CarltonReid

https://strathpuffer.co.uk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IS-SjvNeRcU&t=175s

TRANSCRIPT:

Carlton Reid 0:13

Welcome to Episode 345 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Saturday 27th of January 2024.

David Bernstein 0:29

The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e-bikes for every type of rider. Whether you're commuting, taking your kids to school or even carrying another adult, visit www.ternbicycles.com. That's t e r n bicycles.com to learn more.

Carlton Reid 1:04

I'm Carlton Reid. And on today's episode we follow my son Josh with 24 hours 24 hours of mountain bike racing on the hills above Strathpeffer in the freezing Scottish Highlands, I was support crew handing Josh his food, water and bubble-free Red Bulls from a rental Range Rover at the side of a fire road climb right on the Strathpuffer course. You'll hear audio recorded during the day when Josh was chipper, and then through the 17 hours of darkness when he was well — spoiler alert — suffering. He managed 20 laps of what's affectionately known as the Puffer. And that's quite some achievement for him because ...

Josh Reid 1:57

it's very technical. ...

Carlton Reid 1:59

... because he's more of a roadie/gravel rider. And that snippet of information yelled at me as Josh came past on his first lap told me he'd likely lose a bunch of time on the technical descents. Let's get rolling, beginning with some audio of me clipped from a video recorded on the long drive up to Scotland. We stopped in Glasgow to pick up filmmaker Alfie Marsh who helped Josh produce a stunning film of the event, the YouTube link for which is on the show notes at the hyphen spokesmen.com. I'm not gonna look at you, by the way, I'm going to be keeping my eyes completely focused on the road. So I do not normally drive an internal combustion engine car and certainly not one as mental as this Range Rover that I've got. But Josh needs to go to this event, we're driving on the A9 up towards Inverness, and we're gonna go to Strathpeffer — Josh can tell you exactly what the event we're doing, but clue's in the name, I guess. But to get out there to get all the kit, and to make sure we're kind of comfortable. So we have hired this car. And it's from a company called Turo. So I last time I hired a Turo in America in 2015 when I actually got a Tesla. But here, they've been in the last couple of years. It's basically Airbnb of car hire. So basically rented it off somebody into his personal so it's Gurinder's personal Range Rover. And obviously looking after it's not, you know, it's a rental so don't be gentle, no that you can look after the car. And we're going to be stopping shortly. For coffee breaks, beautiful day here in the Scottish Highlands. And Josh exactly what are we going to so Strathpeffer, what's the event that we're actually physically going to be doing? You're gonna be doing not me. So we're

So we're going to Strathpeffer, but the event is Strathpuffer, or people call it the Puffer. And it's a 24 hour mountain bike event going round a 12 kilometre circuit. And as you can see, I've got laden with bikes in the back here. So I've got my gravel bike and full-suss mountain bike. And basically the aim is to just ride around a circuit for 24 hours and not to stop at all and see if I can get on the podium. We're in just outside of Contin. Lots of big setups here. We're in a small, relatively small setup, just the three of us. And we're gonna be riding for 24 hours. And how are you feeling? Yeah, all right. Ready to get going?

It was a Le Mans start so all the riderss had to run to get to there

Josh Reid 5:16

just in the two hours in on the third lap, and just keep on pushing. Make use of the up hill was very slow on the downhills.

I've lost track of the number of laps I've done. I think I'm on lap five just under four hours completed. That means there's 20 to go Yeah, it's starting to feel like a grind going up this hill.

Carlton Reid 5:55

Coming back fast.

Alfie Marsh 5:56

I can see on the tracker. Josh is literally is just around the corner. There he is. Yes.

Josh Reid 6:08

Yes, my four and a half hours in probably about 20 to go.

Alfie Marsh 6:16 <...