“Why on Earth would you ride a bike for 24 hours?”

“You’re doing what?”

“Are you crazy?”

Or, that dark voice that comes to you as you shake uncontrollably in the wee hours of the darkness: why am I doing this?

In this modern-convenience, creature-comfort, drink-cozy (‘Ooooh! That beer’s too cold to hold!”) age, doing a 24-hour race seems, well, if not outright ‘crazy’ then definitely on the wrong side of ‘well-adjusted.’

Let’s be honest, though: there’s an animal in each of us. An animal that can’t be beaten out of us by cubicles or mortgages or neatly manicured lawns. We either unleash this animal, or die on a couch. Some do this by drinking and fighting; some do it at the gym or on the softball field. And a lucky few do it outdoors, in the woods, chasing and being chased by other animals, celebrating and commiserating with our pack-mates. Or ‘teammates,’ if you prefer a civilized veneer.

And to this we bring that crazed urgency of living that our upright sides seem to have all but forgotten. Why shiver nearly naked in the dark? Why bounce our precious bodies off rocks? Why literally eat dirt and dust?

As one team captain muttered at the start/finish in those terrible pre-dawn hours: “Why are we doing this? This is crazy.”

But these aches and pains we feel for the next several days are reminders not of the crashes or sleeping on the ground, they are reminders that the animal in us is alive and fighting. Because, really, the only reason you ever want to feel this bad is to feel this alive. Not dead at the mall. Not dead at Starbucks. Not dead with a remote in your hand. Alive. Muddied, battered and bloodied but alive we lick our wounds.

Eat. Sleep. Go fast. Because at high noon, we all perish.

See you next year, if you’re still alive.