Four laps, flat out, from a standing start. Legs and lungs screaming, lactic acid building.
The kilo, track cycling’s one-kilometre time trial, has a punishing reputation.
And yet Jody Cundy has been putting himself through it for decades.
“At the end of it, your legs don’t want to pedal. You’re fighting everything,” he tells BBC Sport. “But when you get it right, it’s really cool.”
Cundy is king of the kilo. At the Para-cycling Track World Championships, he has been unbeaten in the event since 2006.
If he wins again at this year’s edition – which starts on Thursday in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands – it will mark his 20th straight year in the rainbow jersey.
Not bad for someone who has just turned 48 years old.
“It’s a fairly dominant run,” he said. “There have been some moments where I thought it wasn’t going to happen and somehow I’ve pulled something out of the bag.
“But I am getting older and the competitors are getting younger. It’s going to be very hard to keep that unbeaten run.
“As much as I would love to do it, the people I have to race this year…I’m in trouble.”
Some of that “trouble” comes from within the Great Britain squad.
Archie Atkinson, 22, was eight years from being born when Cundy won his first Paralympic gold medal – as a swimmer – at Atlanta 1996. Atkinson was just two when Cundy first became world champion as a cyclist, after switching sports.
“One of my first races was against him,” said Atkinson. “That felt pretty special.
“This guy was Paralympic champion, world champion and held a world record at the time.”
But Atkinson is catching up. Last year he beat Cundy at the National Track Championships, only to be beaten in turn by Cundy at the World Championships a few months later.
“I want to win,” Atkinson said. “But if he wins, it’s historic. There aren’t many people who can win for 20 years.”
In addition to his world titles, Cundy is a six-time cycling Paralympic champion – two of those victories coming in the kilo, which he won at the 2008 and 2016 Games.
Such is Cundy’s standing in the squad that his team-mates call him “captain”.
“It feels like I’ve earned a bit of respect from being here for so long,” he said. “I try to be the person everyone looks up to.
“But I know at some point somebody’s going to have to take my place and I’ll be walking away from the sport.”
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