Since he was young Ben Hohnke has, by his own admission, always been someone who likes to set himself challenges.
When he was in primary school, rather than catch the bus, he would cycle to school and back.
So, after seeing that long-time friend, Peter Thistle, had completed a 24-hour solo mountain bike race he thought to himself he wouldn't mind attempting one 'one day'.
Commenting as such on Thistle's Strava post, he then informed the 32-year-old that Armidale was going to be hosting the 2023 World Endurance Mountain Biking Organisation 24-hour solo championships in early November.
Hohnke had envisaged maybe in two or three years, not 11 months.
His interest, though, had been piqued.
After weighing up whether it would be enough time to prepare his body for the rigours of such a race, he decided to give it a crack.
Rising at 4.30am the next morning, it was the start of a journey that would see the Tamworth mountain biker summit the Sport UNE trails and be crowned world champion, with the father-of-three taking out the 30-34 years category.
"It feels a bit surreal," he said of the world champion tag.
"It was only something I sort of set out just to do as more of a personal challenge."
Son James can claim the credit for being the catalyst for it all.
He was really the reason for Ben getting back on the bike.
When he wanted to learn how to ride without training wheels, he "bought a cheap bike off marketplace" and started riding in the Tamworth Mountain Bikers' twilight series with him.
A project engineer with Daracon, Hohnke took quite an analytical approach to the race.
"At work we have a saying we have to engineer the results we want," he said.
"I sort of took the same approach to this. I did what I do at work, I pulled out a spreadsheet for the whole 24 hours and laid out exactly what nutrition I needed per hour, when lights needed to go on the bike, when I wanted to have a water stop, when I needed to clean the chain on the bike and check tyre pressures and different things like that."
He also crafted a detailed race plan and worked out a lap time to maintain across the 24 hours.
It wasn't about being fast, it was about consistency: think the tortoise in Aesop's famous fable.
That mentality was tested as over the first few hours he was lapped several times. But he just kept his focus.
Unbeknownst to Hohnke at around the eight-10 hour mark, his rival had started to slow down and actually took a rest - his pit crew keeping that a secret from him.
"They eventually informed me about midnight that I'd taken the lead and just to keep rolling around and I had a pretty good chance, and that kept me motivated from midnight through to midday the next day," he said.
He did have a bit of a moment of doubt at about 10am the following morning with the rider overtaking him "like I was standing still". At the end of the lap, a frustrated Hohnke relayed his feelings to his crew.
That was when they informed him that he had actually been resting for about eight hours.
Try as he might, the damage had been done, and - as Hohnke wrote on his Facebook page - with his "back on fire", his arms feeling like a "dead weight" and with "no dexterity left in my fingers", he crossed the finish line in 24hrs and 58mins "to the cheers of [wife] Sarah, [children] James, Emma [and] Claire, and a lot of bystanders that I didn't know" to claim the victory.
Joking that if you'd have asked him post-race or the next morning would he want to do another 24-hour race, he "probably would have said no", he said he would "really love" to try and defend his title next year.
The championships will likely though be somewhere overseas, which may pose some logistical challenges.
READ ALSO:
