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CNN Live Event/Special

Fit Nation: Around the World in 8 Races. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired November 17, 2018 - 14:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: In the wild, survival of the fittest rules the day. Be stronger and faster in competition with your rivals and live to see tomorrow. But for humans, that instinct to compete has evolved. Today we organize contests of athleticism, skill, and endurance just to determine who deserves to stand atop a podium and simply declare, I'm the best. And as we've grown more advanced, so have our competitions. Today simple foot races have become near impossible expeditions, lap swimming can be an extreme sport, and riding a bike isn't just riding a bike.

We're about to take you around the world to see some of the most extraordinary races imagined, and meet some of the people brave enough to face them. I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta, and this is "Fit Nation."

We begin our journey in the backwoods of Tennessee in Frozen Head State Park, where every year there is a race so tough only 15 people have ever finished it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have a bit of a problem. I really don't think we're supposed to be going here next.

Welcome to the Barkley Marathons.

GARY "LAZ" CANTRELL, CO-FOUNDER, BARKLEY MARATHONS: The greatest challenges in sports really are pressure and uncertainty. And the Barkley weekend is filled with pressure and uncertainty.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're number 87.

GUPTA: That uncertainty begins with trying to enter the race.

STEPHANIE CASE, ULTRAMARATHON RUNNER: For this race it is a secret how to sign up. The biggest hurdle before you even make it to the start line is figuring out how to get to the start line.

GUPTA: To apply, hopeful runners need to submit an essay on why they should get the chance to compete, but the process is so secretive there is not even a race website. From thousands of entries, just 40 runners are selected. Some of the world's most accomplished endurance athletes are chose to try to complete five 20-mile loops of steep, unmarked terrain with nothing but a map and a compass. But for these runners it's not the 100 miles that makes this race so tough.

CASE: Each loop goes in a different direction. So a race where you're just kind of running around in a forest, not knowing if you're on the right trail or not, it adds a whole other mental element.

GUILLAUME CALMETTES, ULTRAMARATHON RUNNER: I've read all the race reports available on the internet, so I know that some people got some crazy experience. Some people got great hallucination and they saw people and houses where there was just trees. Everything can happen, you know?

GUPTA: Race co-founder Gary Cantrell, or Laz, as he's known, designed the race after learning about James Earl Ray, Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassin, and his attempted escape from a nearby prison. Because of the difficult terrain, after about 55 hours Ray had only travelled eight miles before being recaptured.

CANTRELL: You see the movies and they are chasing the guy with the dogs, and you think that would be really fun to see if you could get away, as long as they weren't going to put you in prison if you failed.

GUPTA: And from the beginning this race sets you up to fail. There is no set start time. It can begin any time from midnight until noon. The start signal, this conch shell, which tells runners they have an hour to get ready. And once Laz lights a cigarette, the runners are off. Runners must complete each loop within 12-hour increments or they're disqualified. Along the way they have to collect pages from 13 hidden books to prove they stayed on course.

CALMETTES: It is considered on the hardest races, so it's kind of a way to test yourself and your own abilities.

CASE: We're just all searching for our limits, searching to see what we're capable of, because you don't really know how much you can handle until it is too much.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hill-pocalypse, 1,500 feet of up, up, up.

GUPTA: Over the entire course there is about 120,000 feet of elevation change.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is like multiple trips from sea level to the top of the ridge and back again. You take this select group of the best athletes, and one percent of them can finish.

(LAUGHTER)

ED FURTAW, FIRST BARKLEY MARATHON FINISHER EVER: Gary Cantrell changes the course as necessary to make it harder any time someone finishes because he is trying to, in his own words, to keep it at the limit of what's possible.

[14:35:07] CANTRELL: We move book locations around a little bit, just do various things to tweak it so you have to adapt and adjust on the fly.

JAMIL COURY, ULTRAMARATHON RUNNER: Going with a group of five at 3:30 in the morning underneath the prison tunnel, and the water was almost knee high. We weren't sure if we were going to be able to cross through. It is a crazy experience.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is raging right now.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The kind of incredible physical beating that these people take, and go out there, 12, 14, 16 hours. You're wet, you're cold, you're hungry.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is fogged in and freezing up here.

FURTAW: The longer you keep going, then it becomes mental. The sleep derivation eventually makes the mental difficulty of doing it equal to or worse to the physical difficulty.

COURY: You can't think about how far you have to go in the whole loop, because it could be hours. My second loop I think took me 21 hours this year. That is almost a day in the woods with no creature comforts. So you have just got to keep moving forward one step at a time, one book at a time, one climb at a time.

GUPTA: For even the most accomplished ultrarunners, the course can seem impossible, leaving just one option.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have made the decision to self-extract. I've got to get myself out of here.

CANTRELL: Everyone has it in themselves. This is really trying to provide an opportunity for them to bring it out.

CYRILLE BERTHE, ULTRAMARATHON RUNNER: At the point where you are lost or where you made some mistakes, it will be physically impossible to get in time.

Around loop 11, if we can find it, it seems like we're not going to make it.

CANTRELL: It would be great if everyone could get that prize, but the nature of the prize is that you can't.

GUPTA: This year mother nature rained down on the course, wreaking havoc on runners. Those who missed the time cut off earned the Barkley's signature send off.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Every year is a different kind of hard. But this weather, you can see it's pretty tough here.

COURY: This is my fourth time doing the race. This was my worst performance by far. So considering everyone else and how they did, I don't feel too bad.

GUPTA: This year's best runner finished only three loops. Once again, the Barkley won.

CANTRELL: People come back alive, maybe hurt in their soul, but physically with things they will recover from.

CASE: That was just glorious suffering. (LAUGHTER)

GUPTA: Coming up, it's risk versus reward for swimmers racing in some of the coldest water on earth.

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[14:41:09] GUPTA: Welcome back to "Fit Nation." This is downhill ice cross, the fastest sport on skates. Sometimes described as ice hockey combined with motocross, racers can reach speeds of 50 miles an hour while barreling down a manmade ice track with three other skaters next to them, trying to beat them to the bottom. What started on a whim as a few guys skating down a frozen street has grown into a global series of races called Red Bull Crashed Ice. It's a great example of how we continue to reimagine competition, oftentimes with inspiration from the world around us.

And in arctic Sweden where subzero temperatures in winter are the norm, they have embraced this philosophy to the extreme by taking a summer sport and turning it into a winter one. There is swimming, and then there is ice swimming.

LARS WESTERLUND, TOURNAMENT DIRECTOR: People who do this are a little bit crazy.

BIRGIT BECHER: That's right, I'm a little bit crazy. I think you to be a little bit crazy when you go into the cold water and swim in the cold water.

KERSTIN THOMAS: You try not to freeze. You swim as fast as you can in the cold water.

GUPTA: This is the Scandinavian winter swimming championship, one of the coldest swimming competitions in the world.

WESTERLUND: A lot of spectators coming to watch it every year, and they come from everywhere because they want to see these brave people suffering in the water.

GUPTA: Studies have shown that swimming in cold water can improve mental health, promote healing, and improve circulation.

ALEKSANDR JAKOLEV, VP, INTERCONTINENTAL WINTER SWIMMING ASSOCIATION: It's a good way to strengthen your body, to strengthen your mind, be ready for extreme conditions.

GUPTA: But swimming in water this cold, especially without a wetsuit, doesn't come without risks.

WESTERLUND: You swim the same way you do in regular swimming but the difficulty is in breathing, because in cold water you're lungs cramp, so therefore you have to train to be able to breathe quickly.

GREG WITHAM: When you first go into the water you need to remember it is mind over matter, you're not going to die. If you stay in for too long you can get hypothermic, obviously, and that's problematic. But the trick is just not to do that.

GUPTA: More than 400 swimmers compete in various short distance races.

WESTERLUND: It's breast stroke, it's free style, but at first we also have butterfly. And butterfly is a little bit special because then you are under the water.

THOMAS: The hesitation before you go into the water when you say no, you don't really want to do this, and if you manage to do it, that is a really good thing.

GUPTA: With the growing popularity of the sport, swimmers hope to test the waters on a grander scale.

JAKOLEV: We hope when in Beijing will be the winter Olympics, the Chinese already told us they would like to show winter swimming as a potential new sport. Winter swimming unites people to be part of this big, big world movement.

GUPTA: Coming up, a marriage between man and machine in the search for speed. But first, surprising sidekicks in one of our country's oldest marathons.

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GUPTA: Welcome back to "Fit Nation."

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Turn around. There we go. We want this side.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Burro racing is -- wow.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The burro race is a fantastic spectacle. He is going to wear me out for the race just getting ready.

GUPTA: In Fairplay, Colorado, a one of a kind race has been taking place in the Rocky Mountains for the past 70 years.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Pack racing started in 1949 between Leadville and Fairplay. They needed revenue because the mining was dying. So the towns got together and they decided to have a burro race.

GUPTA: And the world championship pack burro race was born. According to organizers it's the second oldest continuously run race in the country after the Boston Marathon. This year 89 teams started the race in Fairplay, a world record according to the Western Pack Burro Association.

BRAD WANN, MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICER, WESTERN PACK BURRO ASSOCIATION: Burro racing does require a bit of training because you've got have a relationship with your ass.

BILL LEE: Learning how to motivate an ass is unique.

GUPTA: All puns aside, this is a physically challenging, 29-mile ultramarathon through the Rockies at elevations above 13,000 feet. But the course might be the easiest part of the competition.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Burro race is brokering a deal between you and an animal that is known for not so much cooperation.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you can get the guy that won the Boston Marathon out here running with a donkey, and he could get last place.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Come on, willy.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is about how well you cooperate as a team, maybe even more so than how fast you and your donkey are.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The negotiation you have to do with this guy, the terrain, the trails are brutal, but they're so surefooted. These critter, they just have a good work ethic. So these burros can run a four minute mile if you can hang on.

AMBER WANN: But if you can keep them with another burro they are typically happier and they will actually go further faster. It is their race. I love to run their race with them.

LEE: Some people might look at running a burro for 29 miles as being something cruel. But if you know anything about burros, even more than humans, if they don't want to do it, they're not going to do it. These animals I believe have a love for what they do.

[14:50:00] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They're humble beasts. They will change your life. If you have done your proper training and you understand how a burro thinks and acts, you can convince these animals to pull you up the mountains. We wrap the rope behind our rear ends, pull us up, taking the weight off of our knees. It's a team effort.

JENNIFER MEWES: Take this lead rope. You put a pack saddle on the donkey and then you run along with your donkey, hoping that they want to run with you and run through just whatever obstacles come your way and try to get through without dying.

GUPTA: This year's winner, Kirt Courkamp, finished in just over six hours, but completing the race can present one last challenge.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Burros are colorblind. There's a white line in the street, they don't what that is yet. And your burro sees this finish line going from end to end, and there's no way out, and the donkey stops.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When you cross that finish line with the burro, I don't care if you're the last ass, it is exhilarating feeling to know that you got your partner across the finish, or they got you across the finish line.

GUPTA: When we come back, a competition versus two of the toughest opponents of all, physics and time.

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GUPTA: Welcome back to "Fit Nation." For many, competition is about lining up directly against your peers face to face. But here in Battle Mountain, Nevada, competition is about beating everyone who has come before you. Welcome to the World Human Powered Speed Challenge.

[14:55:03] ALAN KRAUSE, RACE ORGANIZER, WORLD HUMAN POWERED SPEED CHALLENGE: Admittedly, this isn't a normal thing to do.

GUPTA: Every year cycling teams from around the world come here on a quest to break all time speed records.

ALICE KRAUSE, RACE ORGANIZER, WORLD HUMAN POWERED SPEED CHALLENGE: It is a race against time more than it is a race against another person. Some of these team that's come here, they're looking for the top speed. They want to break that 89.59.

GUPTA: And the ideal course for breaking records happens to be on State Road 305 in a remote region of central Nevada.

ALAN KRAUSE: This is the best place in the world to do it. It's the longest, straightest, smoothest, flattest road anyone has found in the world. That's all there is to it. It's also that it's at high altitude, which makes the air thinner and the bikes can go faster.

GUPTA: But these are far from ordinary bikes, custom made with lightweight materials like carbon fiber and Kevlar. These vehicles are marvels of design.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's a unique combination of athleticism and engineering. Both are critical to the performance. A great athlete on a regular bicycle won't top 45 miles an hour in this contest.

GUPTA: Instead of riding upright, racers lie in a more aerodynamic recumbent position and pedal with their legs or arms with special gearing systems. Riders can reach speeds close to 90 miles an hour, must faster than most of us drive.

MIDAS BECKER, ENGINEER, TEAM DELFT, AMSTERDAM: Because the wheel need to go so fast we have a very large transmission. So one turn of the pedal is 16 turns of the wheel in the highest gear.

GUPTA: To reduce drag, riders are completely covered by an aerodynamic shell. Some of them have no window to see out of.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We use the camera system here as your yes, actually, as vision.

KAREN DARKE, HANDCYCLIST, UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL: Being inside a capsule, and just the way it affects your senses and that you can't see properly, there is no window in the bike. So we can only see where we're going on a screen about the size of a mobile phone that's connected to a tiny camera on the top of the bikes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's like playing a video game. You're separated from reality through the video screen. A lot of people describe it as being pretty scary, and I can only imagine.

GUPTA: Teams have seven days of competition to break world records in a variety of different categories.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There's quite a few women this year coming to break the world record for the women, the arm power record as well.

GUPTA: Since riders are completely enclosed, team members helped to launch the bikes from the start line.

KEN TALBOT, HANDCYCLIST, UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL: It drops town, and I lose the outside world, because I can only see the screen ahead. And when you are riding, you have no reference for speed, you have no reference for depth perception. So as I'm riding along, all I can see is straight ahead, and I don't know how fast I've gone. And the feel is unlike any other bike I've been on.

GUPTA: Riders have eight kilometers of road to build up their maximum speed before they enter a 200-meter speed trap where their average speed is measured.

ISHTAY AMMINGER, JUNIOR CYCLIST, TENNESSEE: You want to slowly build up all of the way down until you have one mile left and then you start sprinting. That way you don't wear yourself out.

DARKE: You're in this thing that just looks like an egg going down a highway in the middle of nowhere, and it only takes a tiny bit of wind to blow it slightly off course.

ALAN KRAUSE: To set a world record it really has to be perfect. All kinds of things can go wrong from a simple flat tire to being off of the road, and the wind. We had a close call with a deer yesterday. The schedule is grueling, to the failures can be human. We get tired, forget a little critical thing. Really, all the plants have to align for there to be a record. Everything has to just be perfect.

GUPTA: The top speed record survived this year, but other records fell. Ken Talbot broke a seven-year-old mark clocking in at 51.58 miles an hour in the men's armed powered race.

(APPLAUSE)

GUPTA: Karen Darke broke her own record riding at 46.54 miles an hour in the women's arm powered race. And the youngster Isthay Amminger broke the junior tricycle record at 60.94 miles an hours, three miles an hour faster than the previous mark.

TALBOT: I always thought one day I'm going to be a world record holder. And then everybody said it's not going to happen. Get a real job. Get a real job. And I realized, you know what, I'm going to make it happen. To be able to say I'm the world record holder, I'm the fastest handcyclist, it's unbelievable.

GUPTA: Whether we compete against each other, against all-time records, or with a donkey by our side, it seems there's nothing that stops us from inventing new and sometimes unusual ways to test our limits. As we've seen today, that drive to challenge ourselves can send us on some pretty incredible adventures. We hope that by showing you a few of them you will be inspired to get out and start one of your own.

I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta, and this is "Fit Nation."