24 Hours of Adrenalin Photo by Mike Bitton

The run was just less than 1Km, in a circle, around the campgrounds at base II in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada. With me were the top endurance mountain bikers in the world. I was competing in my second-ever 24-hour mountain biking event, the cr�me de la cr�me of 24-hour mountain bike racing— the 24 Hours of Adrenalin World Solo Championship (www.24hoursofadrenalin.com). En masse 150 solo athletes, who qualified via endurance events across the globe, started to run like crazy people who had somehow forgotten they had 24 hours left to ride their bikes. What's the rush? The Le Mans start is a tradition in 24-hour mountain bike racing and its purpose is to spread the field out and lessen the inevitable bottlenecks on the trail at the beginning of the race.

Made popular by the exploits of John Stamstad and more recently of Chris Eatough (6 time World Solo Champion), this type of solo endeavor started back in 1996.� Stuart Dorland, founder of 24-Hours of Adrenalin said, �Ed Hunt at 17 years old did our event in 1994 solo.�� And so this wonderfully masochistic sport was born. The races are simple: Ride the course more times than the next guy in a 24-hour period and you win. At stake in Whistler were a $10,000 purse and the prestige of being a world champion.

"During ultra events I've found the best fuel for me is Hammer Nutrition's Perpetuem. Problem is it's hard to drink what you don't have..."

The course was a 14.3 Km (nine-mile) loop with 460m (1,509 feet) of uphill, climbing the beautiful trails around Lost Lake. It included some very fast, packed gravel trail and some signature Whistler terrain— technical singletrack. The loop ended with a steep dirt road climb of a few hundred feet before a blistering decent to the finish line.

My morning started out much slower than a typical race day. Being an elite adventure racer, I'm not used to sleeping much before a race. A noon start affords you time to sleep in, get organized and eat. Mostly I just ate while my wonderful support crew took care of everything. For this event my support crew consisted of my girlfriend, Tina Vu, Canadian endurance queen and my adventure racing teammate Jen Segger , team Purefit adventure racer Duncan Sailors and adventure photographer Mike Bitton .

After calling each solo athlete up to the start line, we were off, running our loop to the bikes and starting the first lap. I started on the bike in a good spot, I'd say top 15 riders or so. I knew I wanted to start out pretty fast and stay up front, but I also didn't want to overdo it on my first lap. I finished the first lap in 56 minutes. My second lap was a bit more interesting. During ultra events I've found the best fuel for me is Hammer Nutrition's Perpetuem. Problem is when you stack and you don't notice your bottle falls out of you bottle cage; it's hard to drink what you don't have. So on my second hour of a 24-hour event, I bonked! Yep, this was a rookie mistake, no backup fuel, I had the one bottle of Perpetuem and that was it. I'm not sure if I ever fully recovered from that calorie deficit.