24 Hours of Adrenalin is an extraordinary event for ordinary riders.

This Saturday, hundreds of people will be joining teams to ride relay laps on mountain bikes at Laguna Seca for 24 hours straight. As nutty as that sounds, those are the more moderate riders in the race known as 24 Hours of Adrenalin.

There are the soloists: riders on a longer dirt course who spend virtually all of the time from noon on Saturday until noon on Sunday on their bike. Bathroom and food breaks are limited.

One soloist in particular has been a crowd favorite for years, and took the title at last year’s event. This year he’s not coming. David “Tinker” Juarez, 44-year-old US Olympian and mountain bike hall-of-famer, has conquered the National Championships solo category seven times already, so maybe he’s got nothing left to prove.

The field is wide open now for someone else to match or surpass Tinker’s feat last year: 20 laps around the 12+ mile soloist course. That’s more than 240 miles up and down insane hills in 24 hours.

===

Although Tinker isn’t coming to display his stunning level of endurance, there are still plenty of other reasons to either compete or hang out at the May 14-15 event.

Founder Stuart Dorland pitches the event as something appropriate for average riders. Dorland, a former triathlete, started 24 Hours of Adrenalin, which is held across the US and in Canada, as a way for people to feel less intimidated by mountain biking events.

“When I started up this event in 1994, I knew I was never going to win a race,” he says. “I wanted to create something more about the experience than about winning.”

The experience includes a weekend of camping and tons of activities, which Dorland says are focused on mountain bike enthusiasts hanging out together.

“It’s a gathering of the tribe: family, friends who want to come out and camp for a weekend,” he says. “You go for a ride, come back and hand the baton and hang out with your teammates.

“In this day and age, where everyone’s timetable is taken up with so many activities, these events work because it brings people out for a weekend to share in a healthy activity.”

Dorland explains that in the fourth year of putting on the event, he eliminated most of the prize money (the world championships in Whistler, BC, still give $25,000) and renamed some of the categories (dropping the word “elite” in the four-person team). This got rid of some of the hardcore pros, and interest in certain categories of the event quadrupled.

“It was the best decision I ever made,” he says. “People told us they felt too intimidated to register before. Now they are getting out and enjoying the experience.

“The focus is on the weekend warriors,” he says. “Bringing more people out to enjoy great green spaces and not feel intimidated.”

Dorland says that overall, interest in professional mountain bike racing has “hit rock bottom.”

“NORBA [(National Off-Road Bicycle Association)] and World Cup racing is at an all-time low,” he says. “There are no sponsors and no real interest. There is only so much focus people can have on elite athletes. The rest of us want to be inspired by them, but we also want to be able to participate over the weekend and be able to go to back to work on Monday morning. We don’t want to have to worry about being sponsored. What helps society more is to get more people out on bikes.”

===

More and more of those people are women. This year, in addition to the Monterey-born Velo Bella all-women’s bike team (see story, pg. 22), professional mountain bike team the Luna Chix makes its debut. Luna Chix team members include Alison Dunlap and Shonny Vanlandingham, both of whom competed for a spot on the last Olympic women’s mountain biking team. Dorland says that women like these are acting as ambassadors for the sport, and points out that the 24 Hours of Adrenalin events have more than double the number of women participating than at other races.

“Typical mountain biking events bring 4 to 6 percent women,” he says. “At our events, 12 to 15 percent of the total field is women.”

Besides the actual race, the weekend includes appearances by host Krusty the Clown, late night movies, a corn-on-the-cob roast, and 24 Minutes of Adrenalin: a kids’ race where small ones navigate orange cones and try to remember which direction to head in.

There’s also the “best pit theme” contest, where teams rig up pirate ships, Flintstones houses, and Barbie paraphernalia, and a “best helmet” contest, where “the crazier, the better” is  encouraged.

There’s a “schwag off” where prizes are given in headstand, push-up, and wheelbarrow contests; music; a post-race pasta party; and, at night, the chance to watch the dark hills come alive with the glimmer of hundreds of riders’ lights.

“Why 24 Hours of Adrenalin works, is that it’s really a camping weekend with a bike race in the middle of it,” Dorland says.

Race registration and volunteer sign-up take place on Friday, May 13, from 7-10pm. The race begins at noon on Saturday and the countdown to the finish begins at 11:59am on Sunday. www.24hoursofadrenalin.com