Blaine Bourke began to question what he was doing as darkness fell across the 89th hour of an ultramarathon in central Victoria.

"Towards that last night I started going a little bit loopy," Mr Bourke said.

"My dad did a checklist, like 'Do you have your tracker, timing chip, do you have your head torch?' and I said, 'Yeah, but what am I doing here?'

"He said, 'You're racing!'"

Mr Bourke said he did not last long after that.

"The biggest thing is the mental confusion of what you have to do,"

he said.

The event — Harry's King of the Hill, held at Pyalong in central Victoria, is a gruelling endurance test.

Runners complete a 4.2-kilometre circuit with a 266-metre elevation gain every hour, continuing until only one person remains.

Runners who fail to finish a lap within the hour are

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