Once the initial attack has occurred, once your heart recovers from the sound of the alarm and the screaming sirens, once the big flames are knocked down, what remains are hours of soggy, backbreaking work. Dragging hoses, cutting holes in walls and roofs, lugging gear up and down ladders.

And yet, despite the drudgery, the work remains dangerous. If something goes wrong, you want to know that the person who got you in can get you out. The Scott Firefighter Combat Challenge has found a way to create an exciting competition while still recognizing that much of firefighting is a backbreaking slog. Packed into a couple of semis pulled by International tractors, the event tours the U.S. (www.firefighter-chal lenge.com). Featured on ESPN as "The Toughest 2 Minutes in Sports," the challenge requires firefighters to simulate the physical demands of real-life firefighting.

The reality begins with the gear requirements: rather than form-fitting body suits and track shoes, each competitor steps to the line in full firefighting gear, including "bunkers" (bulky fire-proof pants and jacket), boots, gloves and a helmet. Competitors must also wear a full face mask and breathe from a backpack tank.

The event itself consists of five tasks. Competitors must first shoulder a 45-pound hose pack and climb a five-story tower. Then they grab a rope and hoist a 45-pound roll of hose to the top of the tower, hand-over-hand. Next, they descend to the base of the tower where they grab a sledgehammer and simulate chopping by driving a 160-pound steel beam a distance of five feet. They then zig-zag between simulation hydrants to the fourth station, where they advance a fully-pressurized attack hose a distance of 75 feet, then open the nozzle and strike a target.

Lastly the competitors must drag a life-sized, 175-pound dummy "victim" a distance of 100 feet to the finish line. Seems pretty straightforward, until you try it.

At a recent Challenge in Minneapolis, the novices were easy to spot. They looked nervously at the tower, and even more nervously at the top-tier competitors, as lean and muscular as professional athletes.

Some competitors used up an entire bottle of air – 30 minute's worth – in under 10 minutes, and emerged from behind their masks wide-eyed and red-faced from exertion. More than one wound up kneeling over the dummy, head shaking, unable to drag the thing another inch.

Still, the Challenge welcomes individuals of all abilities, and it was heartening that the loudest cheers of the day came for competitors who were obviously struggling to finish.

But if you decided to compete after sharing a couple of beers with your buddies after your last monthly fire meeting ("How hard could it be to lift a hose roll?"), you're in for a big surprise. In 1991, when the first competition was held, the winner completed the course in 3 minutes 41 seconds.

Ten years later, six competitors have made the "Sub 90 Club," reserved for those who cross the finish line under 90 seconds. Bob Russell, a firefighter from Overland Park, Kansas, holds the Challenge record at 1:25.76. Jeff Leduc, a full-time firefighter from Thunder Bay, Ontario, and overall winner of the Minneapolis event with a time of 1:53.66, says he prepares for competition by running 2,100 stairs per week – while carrying a 45-pound weight.

The Challenge in Minneapolis was fiercely competitive, but refreshingly free of the in-your-face showboating associated with so many modern sporting events. Every firefighter is utterly exhausted at the end of the course, and invariably, a team of supporters waited to catch each competitor as he or she fell backward over the finish line with the dead weight of the dummy. ("Rescue Randy," says the announcer, joking, "we don't like to call him a dummy!").

One competitor, already finished, ran to the side of another competitor having difficulty lugging Rescue Randy, and hollered, "Here! Lock your arms in like this!" A sense of unity prevailed, heightened by the prevalence of NYFD "Fallen Heroes" T-shirts among both the competitors and the crowd.

Still, things were never too serious. While one competitor was psyching himself up at the start line, huffing and pawing like a bull, one of his coworkers was seen whispering in the announcer's ear. The announcer then turned to the microphone and informed the entire crowd that, "We understand that Bob here is lookin' for a girl!"

Despite what you might think, the Scott Firefighter Combat Challenge didn't come about as the result of some late-night firehouse brag session.

Founder Paul Davis, Ph.D., was on the faculty at the University of Maryland Sport Medicine Center in 1975 when a fire department official asked him to study the energy required for a firefighter to climb a ladder and chop a hole in a roof. Later, Davis was overseeing fitness programs for the U.S. Navy when he began to notice a parallel need within the fire service.

Davis taught his first firefighter fitness class in 1989, but something was still missing. Noticing that interest grew when he incorporated actual job-related activities in the course, Davis hatched the idea of the first competition in 1991, and firefighting was off to the races.

The Streamlight Relay competition allows teams to split the duties of the Combat Challenge between three to five firefighters. Rather than a baton, team members pass a Streamlight fire lantern from hand-to-hand as they complete each event. A recent addition to the Challenge, the relay is gaining popularity, helped by the fact that the top relay teams outpaced two exhibition teams of National Football League pros last year – despite the fact that unlike the real firefighters, the NFL players weren't required to wear firefighting gear.