“The only thing running 100 marathons gave me was false confidence.”

Brooks Bash ran from Canada to Mexico, then 100 marathons in 100 days, then another marathon, then 300 miles of The Speed Project all on his own. How many miles is too many miles? How far is enough?

Apr 25, 2024

I meet Brooks Bash in Venice, Los Angeles. He’s polite and welcoming. He’s hobbling. Why he’s hobbling is kinda why I want to speak to him. Here’s a quick look at what he’s been up to:

Aug 2023: 600 miles as part of a relay team from Canada to Mexico
Nov 12 2023 - Mar 03 2024: 100 marathon distances in 100 days
Mar 17 2024: The Los Angeles Marathon (a normal 26.2 miles in one day)
Mar 25-31 2024: 300-mile solo run from L.A. to Vegas for The Speed Project

Why’s he done all that? Brooks started a company called Earthy. It’s a supplement company that is transparent about its active ingredients, and he swears by it (of course), extolling its recovery properties, but we’re really not here to talk about organic mushroom-based hot chocolate.

In lieu of a jumbo marketing budget, Brooks used his entrepreneurial startup mentality to devise the way he would get Earthy in the news: by doing something outrageous. Pushing his body to the limit as publicly as possible was his way of showing what his adaptogenic energy drink can do for athletes and humans.

Brooks Bash by Venice Beach © Running Sucks / Raziq Rauf

There’s a fun line to be said here about ‘running a business,’ but instead I’ll focus on the lessons that Brooks Bash learned about running, and about himself.

The running escapades ranked

Canada to Mexico: EASIEST

“We didn't have a plan. We didn't know where we were going to sleep each night. We had a van but that was tricky because there were some places where we would just sleep on the side of the road, some places were sketchy. I wasn't very comfortable sleeping just anywhere. That was the challenging part.”

100 miles in 100 days: 2nd HARDEST

“I'm still running the business and trying to be a husband, but also taking six, seven hours a day to run on top of working eight hours.”

“I did one on the treadmill because we drove the van to Texas for the holidays. So I figured out how to put a treadmill in the back of the van, and did the full marathon on the treadmill while we were driving.”

“I did that challenge until my company hit its funding goal. From zero to 93 [marathons], I didn't know where the finish line was, so I was just going and going, and my body was fine. On no.93, we started to get close, so on day 94, I said ‘I'm going to stop at 100,’ and my body completely fell apart. I got sore. I got tired. The last week was by far the hardest because the finish line was in sight. It’s super interesting psychologically - my body was holding it together until then, because it thought it was doing it forever.”

Los Angeles Marathon: 2nd EASIEST

“The challenging part there was on mile 16 or 17, I had something flare up in my achilles that happened on day 100. I would not have been able to run no.101 - It was really bad. I took two weeks off, and it kind of went away, and I felt fine, so I did the L.A. Marathon.”

“The only thing running 100 marathons gave me was false confidence”

Brooks Bash

“Because I did 100 marathons very slowly - 12-15-minute miles - in my head, I create these haters. During the 100 marathons the haters were saying, ‘You're going so slow.’ So I was like, ‘I'll show you guys.’ I showed up to L.A. and did an 8 min/mile average.”

The Speed Project: HARDEST

“What screwed me was that the 100 marathons here had zero elevation. The first 10 miles of TSP, we're going up toward mountains. The first day there was over 6,000 ft elevation gain, and I've been doing zero. Mile 6 of 300, that ankle issue flared up ten times worse than it had been so the next 294 miles were just fighting through pain.”

“The worst was how daunting it became. The first day, I was supposed to get 60 miles, I got 60. The second day, I was to get 77 miles, I got 35. The next day, I was supposed to get 65 miles, and I got 40, so I kept falling back. In my mind, I'm never gonna quit because that's just not who I am, but I was in so much pain and my team is like, ‘Hey, you're halfway!’ I'm like ‘What do you mean? I have to do that again??’”

Brooks on running

If you’re still wondering why Brooks has undertaken all of these extravagant running challenges in the name of his organic mushroom-based hot chocolate performance drink company, there is a link.

After growing up active (“My parents did a good job of giving me this love of the outdoors and fitness and movement.”), he got a back injury. Doctors told him he needed surgery and “could never be active again.”

Remember: Brooks Bash does not quit.

“I went on this holistic healing journey and changed my diet, changed my lifestyle. Chinese medicine is how I originally stumbled upon these functional mushrooms.”

The whole point of Earthy is optimizing your health. Brooks is at pains to highlight the transparency that his company has in terms of ingredients and benefits. He tells me that only ingredients that actually do something are included. The anti-inflammatory properties of lion’s mane and beetroot could be crucial in a world where 34% of Americans suffer from chronic, systemic inflammation - a condition linked to an increased risk of developing cancer, heart disease, and diabetes.

During Brooks’ rehabilitation he got into swimming, and pushed himself into triathlons, but running was the one that stuck.

“I was always hiking or running around or getting lost in the woods. That's just a mini version of trail running, so I think it was always inside of me. I did my first 50k trail run two years ago and it was my first running race. Within the first mile, I was texting my wife, ‘This is so amazing.’”

Brooks Bash on Venice Beach © Running Sucks / Raziq Rauf

The Speed Project has been billed as the most difficult trail race in the world, and while it’s usually run as a relay by teams of at least six, Brooks ran it alone with unfortunate consequences.

“I don't track my runs. I don't bring a watch, I just go for the feeling: for pure enjoyment; how my body feels; how my mind feels. We do it because we're in trouble in school, or have to hit this certain split, or have to lose weight. Running has lost the joy and the purity. Humans were designed to run - that's how we survived back in the day.”

The Speed Project wasn't ever about winning it. I just wanted to see if I could get from here to here on my feet, and The Speed Project took a little bit of the joy out of running for me.”

Isn’t that one of the most definite possibilities of pushing one’s body to its limits, though? The same way we used to sit in school (OK, well I did this) bending a plastic ruler over until it snapped. Finding out how far you can bend that ruler, though, is important. Keeping on buying and breaking new rulers over and over again is certainly one definition of insanity, and when I suggest that his are the actions of a madman, it’s not something that Brooks shies away from.

“It makes me smile a little bit because that means I'm onto something. In this world of noise, it wouldn't make sense to me to start a brand and just do the stuff that everybody else does. That's more insane to me. I’m trying to do something radical and really stand out in a way that only I can. So, yeah, it makes me smile.”

Pushing our bodies to their limits is certainly a vibe, isn’t it. Getting a Guinness World Record is a heady achievement, and the publicity it generates can help bear fruit. It’s not why I run, of course. My ‘why’ is closer to how Brooks runs normally: my health. I keep that idea of 45 minutes of exercise three times a week that my family physician suggested close to my practice. One of the reasons is that I don’t trust my body to be able to handle a huge workload like what Brooks put his body through.

Maybe it’s the world that people like myself and

Craig Lewis

live in, where we’re always searching for people like Brooks who are making big, big stories via the medium of running, but it’s a world where running the length of the western coast of America, then running 10 marathons, and another one, before running another 300 miles (480km) hasn’t quite been enough to land a national news segment.

Brooks’ “Why” - while performing all those running challenges, at least - was to help promote his new business, and it’s worked to a certain extent (I’m here, after all) but I can’t help but feel his exploits deserve more attention.

It could just be bad timing, of course, as the exploits of Russ ‘Hardest Geezer’ Cook running the longest length of Africa and Jasmin Paris being the first woman to ever finish the Barkley Marathons captured the hearts of mainstream news around the world in the very same month.

There’s something to be said for both feats - especially the way the Scot made the nerdiest, most underground race in the calendar something that even my non-running friends talked to me about - but during the relentless pursuit of running the furthest, longest, fastest, mostest, it’s crucial not to lose sight of the joy we find through running.

Ways to make running suck less covered today

Run in nature
Leave your watch behind
Set yourself an arduous running challenge
Find out where the ruler snaps (and stop snapping the ruler)

Running Sucks Haiku of the Week

Got perfect cadence
But I lean forward too much
There’s always a ‘but’

Yesterday, I had the distinct pleasure of visiting Blue Ribbon Sports in LA. Located in the building where Nike sold its first shoes, it’s now the site of the Nike Sport Research Lab, and I had a gait analysis performed on me.

They filmed me running on a treadmill for a few minutes, and then a computer told me how I run. I’d give me an 7/10! The ‘leaning forward too much’ but means I don’t use my glutes enough and could lead to a back injury. We wouldn’t want that now, would we!

My gait analysis results from Nike Sport Research Lab. I’m pretty much slap bang in the middle of the hexagon! Some work to do, but a solid base to launch from.

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Links & further reading

Brooks Bash [IG]
Earthy [WEB]
About adaptogenic mushrooms [Healthline] [Women’s Health]

I had actually included a paragraph in this piece about how marathons seem to be the normal running distance ‘these days,’ and then

Maggie Mertens

of The Atlantic (my interview with that mag’s CEO Nick Thompson below) wrote this great piece titled The New Quarter-Life Crisis about how young people are running marathons like never before. I suspect the L.A. Marathon figures are juiced by Venice Run Club, or maybe VRC, with its younger demographic is wholly indicative of the trend.