Why Tenterfield marked finish line of wild Red Bull race against sunrise

Running from Surfers Paradise Beach to Tenterfield in NSW, 12 teams of six competed in the 24-hour relay event that required digging deep and finding extra energy to get over the line.

The aim was to start at sunrise, running across 345km to beat the following days sunrise.

So what is it about the Tenterfield sun that had has dozens of elite endurance athletes making their way there from Surfers Paradise, ending up at Bad Manners Cafe in the early hours of the morning for a Red Bull energy drink and a coffee?

"It's an annual event started by Courtney Atkinson, who is a very good athlete," co-owner of Bad Manners cafe, Kerri Hampton said.

"Courtney is a well known Red Bull athlete and I've had a long standing relationship with him from my time of doing triathlons many, many years ago.

"It just so happened that about six months ago he popped up to the cafe and we ran into each other, so it was a bit of a meeting by chance.

"Last year, the race went into the Giraween area in southern Queensland just south of Stanfield, so we managed to convince Courtney to shift it down i think another 40 kilometres to Tenterfield," she said.

After a mammoth trek across road, trails, mud and scenic country-side scenes in unforgiving weather, with an impressive time of 22 hours and 34 minutes (holding an average pace of 3:55/km) it was team Unofficial Run Club x Recovery Lab HQ, lead by Ben Seymour who beat the sun and took out the winning title.

Ms Hampton said its more than likely the event will once again return to Tenterfield in 2025 and become an annual event helping to solidify the Tenterfield region as a tourism destination especially for elite sports events such as long distance running and also mountain bike riding.

"We've already spoken about next year, and hopefully the event will be bigger and better in 2025 and beyond," she said.

"I feel Tenterfield is gearing up to become a an adventure tourism destination with the start of our mountain biking trail network, which will built in the next couple of months, so hopefully we'll have some more Red Bull events in the future on top of the race the sun."