First of all, it's not a race. There's no prize for winning, and because it is insured as a reliability ride we will not even announce the order people finish in - we will just announce an alphabetical list of the teams which finished by 11am Sunday. However, we will give you a certificate with your time.

To complete the course in twenty four hours, you only have to average 17Km/h (10.5 mph), which isn't very fast. But you do have to average 17Km/h all the time. Which means baton hand-overs need to be sharp - we certainly wasted more than half an hour last year on baton handovers alone. But it also means that the road stages need to be taken quicker, to allow the mountain bike riders to complete their sections without taking undue risks. From my planning I'm confident that if you can sustain 24Km/h (15mph) average on the road stages you'll leave your mountain bike riders plenty of time.

Secondly, however, everyone is going to be interested in how fast it's possible to do it. So here are the tips and tricks which I'm thinking of, and most of them come down to matching the right rider and the right bike to each stretch of the course.

Time Trials specialists

From the start at Glen Trool Visitor Centre up to the end of the metalled road at Bruce's Stone is only about ten kilomtres, and it isn't brilliant tarmac. But if you sent your mountain bike rider on ahead to Bruce's Stone and used a time trials specialist to cover those ten kilometres, you'd get a useful psychological jump start on teams using mountain bikes. You won't be allowed to take team cars up the glen road, since if everyone does the congestion on the singletrack road will be horrible, so you'll need to send your mountain biker up cycling and your time trialler will have to come back the same way. Nevertheless it should still be worth it.

The routes from Dalbeattie to Mabie (33Km) and Mabie-Ae (26Km) are reasonably short, and include no major hills. A time-trials specialist should blast these, particularly the first (getting through Dumfries on the Mabie-Ae stage will inevitably slow things down a bit).

Crossers

The Glen Trool Orange Route is all forest road; all non technical. A mountain bike is overkill and a cross bike will be faster. So if you send a crosser off from Glen Trool and send a mountain biker up the forest drive to take over the baton at the top the Kirroughtrie Black Route, again you could gain useful advantage early in the day.

Once again you may not take team cars up the forest drive, for the same reason - if everybody did we'd have a mess.

Mountain Bikers

Keep your most skilled mountain bike specialist for the technically most difficult routes, which are probably Kirroughtree, Ae and Glentress. This also means that the rider gets a good rest between Kirroughtree and Ae, and again between Ae and Glentress (if you've got a camper can as a team car, give this rider priority for the bed!). Your less skilled mountain biker then rides Dalbeattie and Mabie with only a short rest between, then gets a reasonable rest until Newcastleton.

Road Stage Handovers

Three road stages are long. The first, Kirroughtree to Dalbeattie, is early in the day and has only one real climb - out of Creetown over the Cairnsmore towards Rusko - so it isn't especially tough. I don't think there's anything to be gained from a mid-stage changeover. The second, Ae-Newcastleton, has an exceptionally tough climb late in the stage, out of Langholm. I think a handover in Langholm, with your best road rider taking over just before the climb, would be a good plan. The final road stage has a number of long climbs which aren't vicious but by the time you get there everyone is tired. A mid-stage handover in Hawick is worth considering.

Lights

It will be getting dusk by the time you reach Ae. Unless you are reasonably fast you will need lights on the Ae stage, and you should certainly have them ready in case. You will certainly need lights for Ae-Newcastleton, for Newcastleton itself, and for Newcastleton-Glentress. If you are very fast you will need lights for Glentress. So you should plan to have enough batteries charged up and ready to ride two mountain bike stages in darkness, and two road stages in darkness.