Jamie Wilkins gets to know the Rad am Ring by bicycle in a four-man team taking on the 24-hour race around the infamous Nürburgring racing circuit in Germany.
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While not well known in the UK, Rad am Ring is a weekend-long festival of cycling with 5,500 competitors and hundreds more supporting, spectating, enjoying the atmosphere and running the expo and bike demos. Loads of races run simultaneously; the main event is the 24-hour road race for solo riders or teams of two, four or eight, for men, women or mixed. Then there are shorter races of 25, 75 and 150km, a one-lap time trial on the Friday evening to kick things off and a pro race on the Sunday afternoon to wrap it all up. The mountain bike version of the 24-hour race shares some of the road course and then dives off into the Black Forest.
The star of the show is the Nordschleife circuit. Nicknamed the Green Hell by Formula One legend Jackie Stewart after he won there in 1968, it stands like a Colossus over the event. The course combines the modern F1 circuit with the old Nordschleife (the N24 layout, motorsport geeks) to make a 15-mile lap with 1,500ft of climbing, the majority of it coming in the middle of the lap and crowned with the nefarious 20 percent ramp of Hohe Acht.
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We were invited to join distribution company Madison to make a four-man team. Profile Design, one of Madison’s longterm partner brands, is the main sponsor of the event and has entered several times before. Their two riders would be Jim McConnel and Peter Slijkhuis, both RAR veterans and elite level athletes; last year their team finished 13th out of 500-plus. In the absence of volunteers from the office, I messaged my good friend, training buddy and sometime time trial rival Dave Janes. He sent back an emphatic ‘YES!’ within seconds.
- The course: Rad am Ring, 466 miles around Germany's Nürburgring circuit
- The horse: Ridley Noah SL with Profile Design Twenty-Four 58 wheels, Light & Motion Urban 800 lights
- The equipment goal: To ride the 24-hour team race
We arrive in Germany after an 11-hour journey and with no time for a warm-up before the time trial our legs feel wooden, so we’re grateful that, bar a few small lumps, the first five miles are downhill. Much of it is really fast, consistently over 40mph and well over 50 on the plunge down into the ‘Foxhole’ section.
Race day
Feeling the burn
A new dawn, a new day
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