- Man vs. Tesla, Man Wins
- Ultrarunner outlasts Model 3 by 100 feet after 242 miles of Texas heat.
- Why? Why not?
To the great pantheon of wacky stunts that maybe prove nothing, add this one: ultramarathoner Robbie Balenger outran and outlasted a Tesla Model 3 by 100 feet.
Wait, what?
In the olden days they had man-vs.-horse events, to see which could outlast which. They still have those over in Scotland, where they apparently take pub talk seriously.
Nowadays, men’s activewear label Ten Thousand has something similar in its “Feats of Strength” series. Those include: most pullups in 24 hours (7800), carrying a 45-pound rock underwater for five miles (you swim to the surface to breathe, apparently), carrying two 62-pound gas cans of water down the Grand Canyon and back up, and completing the most laps around the runners’ Central Park Loop in Manhattan in the just-over 18 hours that the park is officially open (the old record was 11 loops for 67 miles in just over 14 hours).
The latter record was broken by Balenger at 16 loops covering a total of 100 miles in 18:07:44. Balenger has also completed the 63-day, 1200-mile Colorado Crush foot race up and down the Rockies, and ran across the United States in 75 days.
So this might have been, well, not exactly easy, but doable—at least for Balenger. Instead of man against horse, this event pitted man against horsepower, or, rather, kilowatts. The horse here was a Tesla Model 3 electric car. What made the Tesla Model 3 a worthy opponent?
“Tesla is the most disruptive and exciting thing to happen to transportation since the first horse was broken,” said Balenger. “So what better opponent for a modern take on the man vs. horse race?”
Indeed, what?
So Balenger and the Tesla began at the same starting point 250 miles outside of Austin, Texas, and at the same time. The Tesla was then driven at a median speed of 65 mph for the duration of a full charge, which wound up being 242 miles, and set Balenger’s race distance. Balenger followed the exact same route as the Tesla but on foot, and, despite temperatures in the 90s, was able to beat the Tesla’s 242-mile distance by a full 100 feet in 76:54:46 hours.
Wait, 76 hours 54 minutes? He ran for three days?
“That's correct,” said his publicist. “He ran for three straight days, only making sporadic stops for sleeping, eating, brushing teeth, changing clothes, etc.”
The publicist said that only 8.5 of the almost 77 hours were spent not running – “30 minutes for sleep here, 40 minutes for rest there.”
“At no point was the clock ever stopped in that time; the (nearly) 77 hours encompasses the entire event—runs and stops—from when Robbie started the race to when he reached the end.”
So there you have it, in the battle of man vs. horse, and now man vs. Tesla, man wins.
Now if we can just get the doors to work…
