In May of 2015, I did something that most “rational” people would call a profound mistake. I signed up for the Infinitus 48-hour race, hosted by the Endurance Society in the rugged heart of the Green Mountains of Vermont. The catch? I didn’t train. Not in the way a 48-hour mountain race demands. I didn’t have a coach, a spreadsheet, or a vertical gain goal. I was just a guy with a busy life and a normal job who wanted to see where my ceiling was. I wanted to see what happens when the safety net of a routine life is gone, and it’s just you and the mountain at 3:00 AM.
The Curiosity of the Average Joe
Most of us spend our lives in a world of controlled variables. We go to work, we manage our responsibilities, and we fit our fitness into the gaps of a busy schedule. We aren’t professional athletes; we are “normal” people who sometimes wonder if there is a gear we haven’t shifted into yet. The Green Mountains don’t care about your curiosity or your busy work week. They are chaotic, indifferent, and relentlessly steep. At 6’3” and 250 lbs, I am built for durability, but I wasn’t built for the “floating” efficiency of an elite mountain runner. I showed up with raw curiosity, a pair of shoes, and hiking boots, completely unaware that the mountain only cares about one thing: preparation.
The Suction of the Green Mountain Mud
The Infinitus course is legendary for its infinity, or figure eight, loop. In reality, it’s a marathon-length psychological battle designed by someone who clearly enjoys watching people struggle. The vertical gain is a slow grind that turns your quads into lead, but the terrain is the real story. Vermont mud in May is a special kind of beast. It’s a mixture of jagged rock and deep, suction-cup sludge that wants to keep your shoes as souvenirs. For a big guy like me, every step is a calculation in physics. You aren’t just moving forward; you are fighting the vacuum of the earth with every lift of your leg. By the end of the first loop, the novelty had worn off. By the middle of the second, the mountain started taking its toll.
The Maceration Deep-Dive: Walking on Glass
The real failure wasn’t my muscles—it was my foundation. Because I didn’t know the first thing about long-distance foot care, my feet were essentially stewing in a mixture of sweat and mountain runoff. I ended up with severe maceration. For the uninitiated, this isn’t just “wet feet.” It is a structural failure of the skin. Imagine your skin turning into wet tissue paper. Every crease in your sock becomes a razor blade. Every step felt like walking on raw nerves and shattered glass. I didn’t know about barrier creams, and I didn’t know that for a bigger guy, the weight-to-friction ratio is a battle you have to win in the first five miles, or you’ve already lost the race.
The Nutrition Furnace and the 3 AM Bonk
When you move a frame my size up a mountain, you aren’t burning calories; you are running a furnace. I hadn’t accounted for the massive glycogen demand of 48 hours. Somewhere at the end of my first loop, the furnace ran out of fuel. The “bonk” wasn’t just being tired. It was a total system shutdown. Cold sweats in the mountain air, the shakes, and a sudden, terrifying realization that my mind was willing to go, but the machine was empty. I was trying to power a car engine on a lawnmower’s worth of calories. This is the reality of the amateur athlete: you don’t know where the edge is until you’ve already fallen off it.
The Honest DNF
I didn’t make it 48 hours. I tapped out after those two loops, sitting at an aid station with feet that looked like they’d been through a blender. I had to have a very quiet, very honest conversation with myself. There is no shame in a DNF (Did Not Finish) when it provides a roadmap for your future. That failure was the seed for Attempt It All. It taught me that “attempting” isn’t about the guarantee of a finish line; it’s about the willingness to be humbled and to learn. I went back to my normal life, I rebuilt my approach to training, and I respected the mountain enough to prepare for the next one.
Have you ever stepped way outside your comfort zone just to see what would happen? How did you handle the reality of the challenge once you got there? Let’s talk in the comments.