It sounds like a tough way to spend a weekend.
Pushing yourself to the very edge of exhaustion, pummelling your body over rugged terrain on a mountain bike and riding laps at 3am.
But for the riders who will start pushing over their pedals in the 10th annual 24 hour mountain bike endurance race in Canberra, they say you just can't beat the buzz of the Scott 24.
This year the race will celebrate a decade of dirt.
In its first year in 1999, there were just 178 competitors. This weekend there will be 2500.
Of these, 18 will have taken part in every race. One, Wayne Morris, will be riding the same bike he started on in 1999.
Jim Trail, an ACT cycling authority and one of the 10-year riders, remembers watching Richard Bontjer and Mel McIntyre become the first men's and women's solo champions in 1999.
''It was just amazing to watch them, it was completely untried in Australia before that, it had been done overseas but not here,'' Trail said.
''We were catching up with them on course and just hearing them talk gibberish at 3am ... and then to see them finish, it was amazing.''
But despite the jaw-dropping efforts of the solo riders, most participants opt for the team version. The Scott 24 hour has solo open and over-40 categories, as well as two, three, four and six-member male, female and mixed teams. There are also corporate and school teams.
Team members can have quick naps, eat proper meals and turn it into a relay event.
For riders like Shaun Lewis, who competes in the Australian elite cross-country mountain bike series and his friend James Williamson, the current 24 hour solo world champion, it's a chance to team-up.
''It's a rare opportunity to be part of a team and instead of racing against my friends, I actually get to work with them, it's a great dynamic and basically it's lots of fun,'' Lewis said.
''It's like a big carnival for bike-minded people everywhere.... everyone knows each other and it's great to have a catch-up, it's a very friendly place,'' Williamson said. Lewis and Williamson will be part of Team Swell-Spank in the competitive teams category. Their main rivals are likely to be team GU Sram Niteriders, with Olympian Sid Taberlay and the Australian champion, Chris Jongewaard.
Trail says its these moments that are the best part of the race for him and plenty of other less elite riders.
''A plodder like me can be on a course with an Olympic rider and I can follow them for a bit and I take corners exactly the way they do and I learn more doing that than months of training,'' Trail said.
''It's one of the rare things in sport that a rank beginner can be on the course with a world champion.
''Some people call it the Woodstock of mountain biking, everyone just gets in there together.''
For some it's a huge social get together with a bit of riding thrown in. There have been men riding the course in tutus, flashing rainbow- coloured tail-lights and the odd naked lap. But there is also the group that take it seriously.
''It's funny, it's sort of two races in one, there is these people that are pushing themselves to the limit in the middle of what the rest of us treat as a giant party,'' Trail said.
Lewis said that Williamson's appearance weeks after 24-hour solo races is enough to make him stick to teams.
''Even a month afterward he still looks drawn and is pretty fatigued,'' Lewis said.
Last year's solo winner Andrew Bell has had to be put on a drip in 40-degree temperatures in a World Championship race. The elite solo riders only stop for a few seconds every few laps, to grab some food or attach lights.
So why does he keep doing it? With a young family of three and a business, Bell only fits in eight hours of training a week and then takes weeks to recover from the 24-hour efforts.
''But if I'm off the bike for even a week my wife is kicking me out of the house to get me on the bike,'' Bell laughed. ''It's just something I've got to do, I need to be on the bike.''
And Bell also said the atmosphere in Canberra made it easier to keep powering through the laps.
''Even in the middle of the night there is still heaps of people around the transition area and everyone is shouting out encouragement, its great,'' he said.
Despite completing times that look exhausting, Trail says he's seen very few people ride themselves too hard and need help.
Bell says after so many 24 hour races he knows what his body can do and doesn't exceed that.
But everyone that The Canberra Times spoke to agreed on one thing; that riding at night is one of toughest parts of the event and also the most rewarding.
''It's like a different type of sport,'' Trail said. ''It's the same track you know back to back but it feels really different and your sense of speed alters.
''But every 24 hour rider will say that when it comes, dawn is just the most amazing experience.''
CORC 24-HOUR MOUNTAIN BIKE RACE
Stromlo Forest Park
Today: 6am to 10.30am: course open for practice, 7am to 10.30am: registration; 11.10am race briefing, noon: race starts.
Tomorrow: 11am, Riders can stop and still get a valid finishing result. Noon, T+24 hours, course closes. 2pm: presentations.