Last weekend was the Rad am Ring 24-hour cycle race at the Nurburgring in Germany. When I was offered a spot on an 8-man team for the event I jumped at the chance to cycle around this legendary race circuit (that and the opportunity to take part in a fairly mental sounding race!).

We headed out a couple of days beforehand to get in a quick training ride and also a lap or two of the track in the car. Since I had not driven down myself I was unfortunately ‘car-less’, but had an enjoyable lap as a passenger in a Mercedes Vito (a van!). Our one short training cycle was great too, particularly since the road surfaces in Germany put the UK to shame – very nice indeed.

The day of the race was fantastic – not a cloud in sight. When we parked our van in our allocated bay next to the track, it became clear that we were not the best-prepared team. Other teams had set up large marquees and in some cases even sofas and custom made bicycle racks (we just ‘borrowed’ a barrier)!! We did have matching kit though, despite the fact that it was actually FDJ team replica kit from China…

I was down for the first leg of the race, and after pinning on numbers and sorting out the transponder (for timing), I ambled down to the start line. Turns out that in a race with over 1000 cyclists on the track at once, it’s a good idea to get to the start early as I was several hundred places back. Nevertheless, when the race started I gradually made my way forwards in the mass of cyclists. After the first couple of miles the track plunges down rapidly, with a particularly fast section where I reached 60mph (insane)! Sadly, what goes down must come up (or something like that ;) ) so the following 5km are all uphill, finishing with a particularly nasty 17% section. Thankfully it appeared that I was faster than most riders on the way up the hill, and found myself finishing the first lap in a respectable 41:46, about 3min off the lap record. We switched over quickly and it was time for my first break.

After a while we got into a good routine, and found to our surprise that we were 3rd amongst the 8-man teams. By the end of my second lap it was around 9pm and I walked back to the camp site to grab some sleep in preparation for my night lap. The night lap (at about 3:30am) was pretty amazing, and well worth the lack of decent sleep. Descending a race track with only some cheap cycle lights was exhilarating, even with the dangerous sections floodlit.

Over the course of the night we had dropped down to 6th place, but we were steadily gaining time back on the 5th place team and by early morning we had overtaken them. After another short sleep, I set off on my fourth and final lap. I pushed pretty hard, but the legs were very tired by now and the long climb was significantly tougher than before. When I came in, we had about 50 minutes left to make the cut-off for the last lap – doable but hard, so we sent out two riders together. Unfortunately they came back a couple of minutes too late to get in an extra lap, so there was no chance of catching the 4th place crew.

All in all, the race was a fantastic experience. I have never been to a cycling race of this size before, with around 1200 teams (about 3500 riders) in the 24hr road race alone and many more in the 24hr MTB race and other shorter road and MTB races.

A great weekend – time to plan for next year!

(the team)

Race photos purchased from Sportograf.