Mexican food is a truly universal cuisine, and the lengths people will go to for a burrito has recently been tested in Arizona. Ultrarunners Jamil Coury and Kevin Russ recently went head-to-head in an annual competition called the Chipotle Challenge, with the winner receiving a year of free burritos from the restaurant chain. What started as gimmicky brand activation tapping into the universal love for burritos and achieving segment dominance on Strava, has quickly turned into a draw for runners seeking a unique challenge – with the absurdity and mental challenge a huge part of the appeal. So, the question is – how far would you run for a year’s worth of free burritos?
The excerpt below is taken from Run. The full article is available paywall-free.
The Thrill of a Unique Chase
The format of the Chipotle Challenge is entirely unique, and that’s part of the fun for competitors. There’s no 12-week training plan for how to succeed at running the same 354-meter stretch of sidewalk for 31 straight days. Nor is there a guidebook for how to emerge on top.
Coury, who’d been running for more than 40 hours straight, was starting to hallucinate. But he found a hidden gear and picked up his pace in the last few hours. Russ, who’d gone into Thursday morning with a 16-mile lead, was eyeing Coury’s surge and wondering if he’d done enough.
“We thought Jamil closed the gap, but we don’t know,” said ultrarunning legend Scott Jurek, on a livestream that now has more than 10,000 views. Jurek flew from Colorado to Tempe for the final day because the competition struck him as, “ultrarunning in its finest, purest form.”