24 hour bike race

Boys are from Mars. Or bars. Whatever, they're strange creatures. Seems there are some strange girls too.

What possesses anyone to want to take turns riding around a 20k mountain bike track in the bush, day and night for 24 hours? It wasn't even for charity. Planet Strange must be quite large; 2,700 people participated, 208 of them did the 24 hr ride solo!

Added to the obvious issue of exhaustion, it was very dry, dusty and 27 degrees during the day. Ben finished a lap in the afternoon red as a beetroot from the exertion in the heat and covered in reddy-brown dust. He'd drunk all his water before the half way mark, had a big stack, landed on his bad back and lost his pump (and that was his first lap). The team went on to get punctures, break chains, have their lights die in the middle of the night etc.

You can check out all the pics here:

• Waiting for the start
• The soloists starting their first lap. Only 24 hrs riding to go! More soloists.
• The team start: 400m run to the bikes
• Grant grabbing his bike (the first rider from Ben's team)
• Complete chaos

I stayed with a friend on the Saturday night to avoid being woken every 3 hours by a dusty sweaty Ben trying to get into the tent. So it turned out to be quite a nice weekend for me.