Saturday, 9:30 PM. Cooper wobbles into the timekeepers' tent. Until tonight, he'd never ridden a single moment in the dark. Handing the baton to an on-deck Billmayer, he looks like he's seen a ghost. "Be careful, man," he says in the hurried transaction. The course is littered with downed riders.

The race organizers say that the best riders fly by night. They like the tunnel vision of night riding; they love the speedy feeling of blurring past things.

Cooper doesn't buy that. Near Nosedive Hill, he came across a crumpled rider surrounded by EMTs. Fifty yards away, two other newly thrown riders were shrieking for medical assistance. As for Cooper, he wrapped himself around a juniper tree and flipped a time or two on account of "moving rocks." Volunteer mechanics in the "neutral-support tent" needed an hour to rebuild his mangled rear wheel. Says Cooper: "That was one of the most frightening things I've ever done."

My other teammates' night laps were uneventful. Not mine. I've got the near-freezing, predawn ride. In the desert night's inky blackness, the course I had phoned in just six hours earlier is now unrecognizable. The big, vertigo-inducing drop-offs between mile seven and eight are unreadable. There's no way to scan the right line of descent. I just hope for the best -- and go for it. But my front tire smacks head-on into some immovable object (log? rock? minicliff?), and I sail over the handlebars.

"You all right?" asks another rider, after I crash for the second time in the space of a mile. "Walk the next hill, okay?"

I do. And I walk the next hill after that. I walk halfway back to the starting line, where I pass the baton to Cooper. I finally make camp just before daybreak.

Billmayer is the only one up. "Thought I'd leave the light on for you," he says. But the small campfire betrays the real story: Everybody has quit. "I guess I'm done, too," he concedes.

I'm shocked. We're less than six hours away from the end of the race. We can't quit, I protest. But Billmayer, who rides next, is resigned to our sad surrender. "I haven't hydrated," he says. "I'm just not ready for another 14 miles." Cooper's wife, Jackie, overhears this comment as she fires up the Coleman stove for breakfast. "You're no IBM," she snorts. "You're 'I Be Gone.' "

Race Wisdom: Everything looks better in the light of day.

Race Reality: Next year, we bring painkillers.

Sunday, 10:30 AM. Miffed that we're caving, I decide to take Billmayer's place. When I pull out of camp, the guy I'm filling in for is alone, burning tumbleweeds to stay warm. But 14 miles later, as I pull into the finish line, they're all there: Cooper, Billmayer, Buttars, even Schwenn, who returned from Moab in time for her midnight ride. In fact, she's the most effusive of all. "You are awesome!" she screams. "Want to do another one?"

Cooper says he was momentarily inspired by my push and thought about making one last lap. "Then Jackie made me breakfast, and I lost it." He tells me to hold on to the baton. If I hand it in now and nobody rides, the team will be disqualified. Turn it in at noon, and we're official.

According to the race results, I turned in the baton at 12:30 PM. My strategic delay gave me the slowest time for the race, a whopping 229 minutes. "I did a faster night lap," whoops Schwenn.

Ironically, the timekeepers -- apparently convinced that nobody could do the course that slowly -- credited us with an extra lap. Officially, we completed not 11 but 12 laps. The winning five-person team notched 17. Nevertheless, we beat 10 teams in our division, including the Cheap Chicks.

The news perks us up. We repair to camp, raise a beer, and make our vows: Next year, promises Buttars, he'll lose those 15 pounds. Next year, says Schwenn, she'll kick my butt. Next year, Cooper exhorts, we'll finish the freakin' race. And next year, we'll all pray to the god of fat tires that Moab's Second Annual Sidewalk Sale gets cancelled.

Todd Balf (toddbalf@aol.com) is a Fast Company contributing editor.

Action Item: 24 Hours in 28 Minutes

Not ready for an endurance event? You can still get a taste of the race by ordering a copy of Granny Gear Productions's 28-minute video, "24 Hours of Canaan: Children of the Night."

The Allegheny Mountains of West Virginia may be damper than Moab's slick-rock massifs, but the fat-tire rendezvous at Canaan has the same trippy feel. Besides offering a glimpse of some of the sport's more outrageous characters, the video lets you crib field-tested tactics for surviving one of these babies.

Coordinates: $29.95. Granny Gear Productions, www.grannygear.com