Mates races have always happened. You grab some friends and a crude timing set-up and see who can belt it down the hill fastest.

However, they have now been brought into the twenty first century thanks to Matesrace – a website that allows you to create a multi-stage enduro race with a bunch of friends by syncing with your Strava.

There’s nothing better than thrashing around with your mates

Creating an event on Matesrace couldn’t be easier. You register your club, include all the segments you want to race, select how long you want the race to last and it’s good to go.

Once the the event has started, Matesrace will use Strava to get your best effort on each segment within the time period. A leaderboard will be displayed for each event, showing who has the fastest cumulative time.

>>> Enduro skills: special stage speed

Matesrace was created by Chris Prior who wanted some way to race with his local club, Brighton MTB.

Shortly after launching, he noticed the forums were buzzing with banter and people were actually riding more to try and climb the leaderboard. He made the site public and Matesrace was born.

It’s such a simple idea, but it could make Strava’s data collection so much more accessible and fun.

An example of a Matesrace event

We think this is really cool because it allows you to fit some racing into your spare time as well as encouraging you to keep riding through the winter when your motivation may be low. The highlight will no doubt be the post-ride pub bragging rights though!

It’s only early days for Matesrace but Chris is hoping to add some nifty features such as night-time-only segments or the ability to create an event where only your first run on a segment counts.

The take up so far has been impressive, with over 1,000 riders registered including some from as far away as Guatemala and Australia.

Check out Matesrace here.

Matesrace is only a service which can be used by riders to track and aggregate their Strava times. Chris is not setting up or promoting any events himself.