Horsham's Rohan Adams and Lower Norton's Mike Speirs have both completed one of the most challenging tests anyone can face on a motorcycle.
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The Wimmera duo ventured north to Alice Springs at the weekend to take on the Finke Desert Race, a 460 kilometre endurance ride across some of the toughest terrain in Australia.
The race begins in Alice Springs, where competitors travel 230 kilometres south across brutal desert and rock to the small town of Finke, before returning the next day.
Adams said it was one of the hardest things he had ever endured.
"It was an eye-opener, that's for sure," he said.
"I was just stoked to make it. I think there was about 120 people that didn't finish it - there's not one stage in the race where you actually feel safe."
In addition to simply surviving, competitors have to complete both treks in under four and a half hours in order to receive the patented prize; an old railway spike from the abandoned train tracks the course follows.
"You have to have a fair bit of luck. You'd be going 150 kilometres, come across some rocks and you just have to hold on and hope you don't hit a big one," Adams said.
"I came off the bike at the 80 kilometre mark in the rocks. I was hurting, but there was a crowd there so I just thought I had to keep going.
"The crowd was unreal, it keeps you going. You'll be knackered, but there's blokes on the sidelines cheering you on at different stages across the whole course."
Adams said the ride back from Finke to Alice Springs on the second day brutal.
"You get right down from Alice to Finke and there's nothing there. No phone service, no shower or anything, just a little community of about 100 indigenous people and that's it," Adams said.
"You're so sore on the second day. My hands were all blistered. You have to stand up 95 per cent of the way so your body is just aching.
"I woke up in the morning and I was like, 'I don't know if I can get back.' So I had four nurofens, lathered my whole body in Voltaren, had some breakfast, two more Panadol and I was like, 'I just have to do it.'"
Speirs, who was undertaking the challenge two decades after he attempted it for the first time, finished on the second day with a time of 4.29.46, just 14 seconds to spare.
"It was a bloody good effort from him," Adams said.
"I was watching his ride and I was thinking he might not make it in time. He must have come home very hard in the last section to get there."
Adams said the competition was something he would never forget.
"It has been at the top of my bucket list for ages," he said. "It's all about that railway spike at the end of it."