← All eventsStrathpuffer
24hr winter MTB race, Scottish Highlands. Solo/pair/quad on a 12.5km fire-road loop with 284m climbing per lap. 10am Sat to 10am Sun. Night riding, cold, mud.
Run since 2005, the Strathpuffer is the definitive winter endurance test in UK mountain biking: 24 hours on a 12.5km forest loop near Strathpeffer, roughly 17 of them in darkness, in the depths of a Highland January. The lap mixes fire-road climbing with rocky, root-laced singletrack that's easy in daylight and treacherous at 3am. Conditions swing from frozen-fast to unrideable slush, and across 16 years the winning solo lap count ranges from 21 to 31. You can't train for the conditions. You can only train so they don't matter.
One lap
A long fire-road climb to the high point, then rocky, root-laced singletrack back down to the arena. Repeat for 24 hours, through the dark and the cold.
Who finishes, and how
Patterns like these, drawn straight from 2026 race data, are baked into how Beina coaches you for this event.
The year of Slush. Absolutely mental, and a great crowd. Love the format, it makes it really accessible for amateurs like me. No doubt it'll be a staple in my calendar.
- Coming in
- My first ever bike race, recovering from a year of injuries and only really started training in November. Even so, having a structured plan made it seem not entirely hopeless.
- What went well
- Fuelling. Kept it simple and easy to stick to on every lap.
- What I'd change
- Not going full gas on lap 2, forgetting to dib, then going full gas again on lap 3. Slow and steady next time, I promise. Conditions depending, I'd also drop tyre pressure. 25 psi was way too high for the slush.
- Bike
- Specialized Chisel (alloy hardtail)
- Drivetrain
- Mechanical shifters
- Tyres
- Specialized Ground Control
- Pressure
- 25 psi (too high for the slush)
Is Strathpuffer for you?
- Big aerobic engine. A modest peak power is fine.
- Comfortable on technical trails, in the dark.
- Strong stomach: 200+ kcal an hour for 24 hours.
- Stubborn. The race rewards not stopping.
Training plan for Strathpuffer
A training plan for Strathpuffer isn't a generic base build. Beina reads the event's exact demands, looks at your specific profile and the time you actually have, and maps a highly adapted plan to the start line.
- 24hr continuous effort, ~284m of climbing every lap
- 17 hours of night riding in sub-zero cold
- Technical descending on trails that degrade through the night
- Fuelling and pacing through the 3am trough
- Long low-intensity rides, building to 6-8hr
- Night rides, lights, layers, eating on the bike
- Tempo climbing repeats at lap-effort pace
- Back-to-back weekend blocks for fatigue resistance
- Built from your current fitness and the time you actually have
- Adapts every week as Beina learns how you respond
- Syncs your sessions straight to Garmin and Wahoo
- One clear next session, never a wall of spreadsheet
