BECAUSE it is there.

And so 186 motorcycles and 24 cars took off around midnight of January 4 from a Balintawak, Quezon City, parking lot and headed out into the darkness to take on a 1,200-kilometer journey that’s scheduled to end exactly 24 hours later from the time one had started it. “Punishing” does not begin to describe it, and for most who joined it is as much a test of wills as it is of wits.

The “it,” in this case, is the 2013 BOSS Ironman Challenge, the eighth staging of the event in as much years, and the “there” could well be the loop of the Northern Luzon provinces that participants needed to traverse. This year, for the first time, organizers reversed the traditional counter-clockwise direction. So instead of tackling Nueva Ecija and its twisties barely a couple of hours after one had started the ride, the route took to Pampanga, Tarlac, Pangasinan and the Ilocos provinces first before looping back down the other side of Luzon. Also, the route this year bypassed Baguio, but it still ended at its traditional venue—a Clark Field, Pampanga, hotel.

BOSS, or the BMW Owners’ Society of Saferiders, had always stressed—and continues to do so—that the event is not a race and is not about completing the route ahead of everybody else. Participants are merely given a 24-hour deadline to make the journey; if they decide to set personal goals and complete the route in the shortest time they could, then it’s a self-imposed rule, if not risk. But the fact is that there are no prizes to be had for finishing on top. Well, there are no prizes to be had for finishing at all.

Except that there is. And it comes not in the form of trophies or bank checks, fat or otherwise, but in terms of satisfaction. It’s a corny cliché, this, but that’s how clichés came to be—they simply are things proven over and over to be true. This year’s Ironman, like the seven editions before it, was filled with stories of bonding, adversities, near-misses and personal triumphs.

There was the story of husband-and-wife Raymon Gabriel and Malou Gabriel, who in previous events shared a bike—not exactly unheard of—but this time around rode separately, with the latter having reportedly gotten her motorcycle only a couple of weeks or so before Ironman. There were the three riders from Brunei who flew in for the event, but whose guide took a spill, and so were left to tag along with another group simply because they were unfamiliar with the route.

Of course, there was Joey Almeda, a multiple Ironman best-finisher, and who this time around again rode an iconic BMW R1200 GS and completed the journey in half the time majority of the participants did. Only minutes after Almeda reached Clark, Jotle Viray, also on an R1200 GS, managed to reach Clark—this, when he ran into bike trouble less than halfway into the trip. From Ilocos down, Viray only had fourth and fifth gears on his motorcycle.

There were the group of riders who took to the route—and finished—on retro Royal Enfield bikes; a septuagenarian finisher; and the more than a handful who faced the challenge riding sport bikes and maxi scooters. There were even a trio of classic Minis.

Meanwhile, the pairings of Elbert Cuenca and Juny Binamira, and of Gemini Co and Noel Lazaro, who drove a diesel BMW X1 and a Mini Cooper S, were first to reach Clark as they completed the route in about the same number of hours as Almeda and Viray managed on their bikes.

And then there was the story of Teth Rayos del Sol—perhaps the most inspiring one in this year’s Ironman. Rayos del Sol, a woman barely over five feet, suffered electrical problems with her Yamaha R6 less than an hour after she took off from Balintawak. She was rescued by BMW Autohaus’s service mobile at the North Expressway, and she and her bike were brought to the Clark hotel where the event was scheduled to end.

There, Rayos del Sol pleaded to the Autohaus technicians to mend her bike—to which they responded by strapping onto the R6’s pillion seat the only battery available; a 3SM-size unit taken from an SUV. It worked, and before 5 a.m. Rayos del Sol was on her way again.

But she took a spill in Tarlac, where her bike was damaged, although luckily remaining rideable. She was relatively unscathed, too, and so was able to soldier on the entire day and deep into the night, reaching Clark barely a couple of hours before the 24-hour period was up. Cheers, tears and the loudest applause heard in the event greeted her arrival.

Now along with stories of triumphs, certainly there were those of inevitable failures—of unmet goals, mechanical troubles and trip-ending spills (only 135 motorcycles finished). But chances are that the participants, who unfortunately only have such stories to tell, will be back for the ninth running of Ironman.

And that’s simply because it will still be there.