I’ve not done a 24, only a 12 but because of the way I am I had to plan and prepare pretty meticulously, including being a club mate of the Euro 24 hour champ who gave me a few bits of advice, so I am a bit of an ‘expert by proxy’ even if I haven’t done many.

1. don’t bother with a camelbak, laps should be about an hour, carry a bottle and replace every lap. Every bit of weight saved is worth it. It only takes 10s max to pick up a bottle and a bit more food and compared to carrying all the weight on my back for that time, no ta.

2. Work out what intake you need and stick to it. Also easier with bottles, to make sure you’re getting through enough fluid because you have to do a bottle a lap or whatever is appropriate. Same with food, I used bars and gels and proper food and wine gums. All gels would have been awful, I needed something a bit more hefty every third lap so tortilla wraps with peanut butter in worked for me. And a sausage roll after 6, and some porridge after 8, and……

3. Don’t stop. If your pace is say an hour a lap including stopping for picking up food and bottles, if you have a 15 minute stop you need to do 3 x 55 min laps to make that back, which is digging deeper than you want to. Even riding a bit slower to enable you to refuel enough on the fire roads is preferable, and gives you less chance of saying **** it and stopping completely. And at the sharp end, those that keep going all night / right to the end climb the leaderboard fast. I reckoned each extra lap was worth about 5-10 places in a field of 100 or so in my category, so while others finished early or stopped for food, I was going up the board without having to go any faster to do it.

4. Know your pace and stick to it. Get a hrm for training, work out your threshold and ride under it. If you can then keep the engine fuelled, you can go on for ever like that. Going harder (and you will have to on some sections / hills) eats your muscle reserves and you can’t replenish them so easily. Don’t waste them going hard on fire roads. This is mostly true at all levels, it’s just the fast boys have much higher power at threshold levels so look like they’re going hard all the time!!

5. Do some long rides in prep, but not so much for preparing the engine – if you get the above right that’ll take care of itself. It for the other parts. I agree about not changing stuff in the run up to the event, but before reaching the run up make sure your kit is what you need. I had used a particular type of saddle for years with no problems, for typical 4-6 hour rides. Once I started riding it for that length of time without getting off for chatting and the like, I found it was giving me severe cock ache. It meant with 6 weeks to go I had to audition several different new types and thankfully found one pretty quickly. I also was getting neck ache from having to lift my head to see past the peak of my helmet, so that went (for the race) and I also put some spacers under the stem to give a more relaxed position. Stuff like that, you don’t want to find out 7 hours in.

R24 is not on this year its Wembo instead £170 to enter. If its your first I would say just ride your bike if you want to stop have a bite to eat then start again just finishing will be good.