Running a marathon already comes with a lot of weight on your shoulders. But one Idaho man took it to another level.
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Idaho resident David Rush recently completed the Idaho Potato Marathon. While wearing 125 T-shirts. This gave him a new Guinness World Record. If that wasn't impressive enough, Rush completed the 26-mile course in just over 5 hours and 54 minutes. Despite the Idaho Potato Race being a 6-hour course.
Idaho Man Earns World Record En Route to Marathon Finish
After the race was over, David said that he nearly gave out because of the overbearing heat under the assortment of shirts.
"The tight, unyielding compression pressure of 125 T-shirts molding around me as a cast left me sweat-soaked, burning alive, grinding down on my spine, leaving me in a hunched position," Rush recalled as caught by PEOPLE.
He added: "The muscles along my spine are aching, my arms are absolutely in agony from the squeezing, the lack of blood, the pain. My feet are on fire from the blisters. My legs are tired for over three hours at this point. I was in agony, miserable and losing concentration."
The 125 shirt added more than 40 pounds of extra weight in a race that was more than 25 miles long.
After his story began to gain traction, Rush released a statement on his website where he explained his reasoning for making an already difficult race even more strenuous. In the statement, he says that his ultimate goal outweighed whatever pain he was experiencing during the race and the training that led up to it.
"I don't do this because I like the pain, I do this because I believe in the power of a growth mindset," Rush wrote on his website.
"I want to show students that you don't have to be born with a specific talent to achieve the impossible. You just have to be willing to prepare, adapt, and refuse to quit when the walls start closing in. Resilience isn't about being strong all the time. It's about being strong enough to find the next step when your body is telling you to lay down."
