‘I Don’t Know How I Did This’: He Ran 1,000 Miles. Around a Single Track. For 18 Days.

If you ever get bored during a basic down and back run again, maybe keep that one to yourself.Mason Wright, a Salt Lake City-based ultrarunner better known as Buff Runner, just completed 1,000 miles around a track at Layton High School in Layton, Utah. The final total: 18 days, 13 hours, and 11 minutes of running in circles. Or, more accurately, 4,000 laps of the same oval, making Wright one of the few people in history to finish a 1,000-mile track challenge (he joins the likes of Yiannis Kouros and Australia’s Nedd Brockmann in that very small club).The numbers are hard to make feel normal because … for the average person, they’re not. Wright averaged more than 53 miles per day, with days that reportedly ran from early morning into the evening, broken up by food, fluids, medical attention, and whatever mental reset you can find while staring at the same lanes again and again.Wright did the run for The Single Parent Project, an organization that supports single-parent families. He’s previously shared that he grew up with a single mother and wanted the run to represent the kind of effort single parents put in every day without a finish line waiting at the end. Last year, he also ran 421 miles across Utah to bring attention to the same cause.Courtesy Mason WrightHis Instagram journal entries throughout the run, starting on April 20, gave a pretty clear picture of how ugly it got. Even at just Day 1 there were heat and stomach problems. Day 3 brought foot pain intense enough that he said he cried, and by Day 4, he had logged 150 miles on very little sleep. Later, he wrote about blisters, nerve pain, and the strange mental grind of repeating the same oval thousands of times.Still, Wright kept connecting the suffering back to the reason he started. In one post, he wrote that single parents don’t get to quit just because things are hard. Later, as the finish got closer, he said the run had become about resilience, pain, and discovering what he could handle.After finishing, Wright wrote in his final journal entry that he was still trying to process what he had done. “Mentally, I don’t know how I am okay,” he shared. “I don’t know how I kept moving. I don’t know how I did this. And that’s what makes me proud.”Courtesy Mason WrightThe best part? Even after 4,000 laps, he said he already missed the track, his crew, the students, the fighter jets flying overhead, and Frank the Mourning Dove.Best Running Gear Deals Right NowBest Garmin Running WatchGarmin Forerunner 265Now 22% OffBest Value HeadphonesJLab Go Air Sport+ HeadphonesBest Anti-Chafing StickBodyGlide Original Anti-Chafe BalmBest Handheld BottleAmphipod Hydraform Handheld Water BottleBest Energy GelsHüma Chia Energy Gel Variety 12 PackBest Value Massage GunBOB AND BRAD Q2 Ultra Mini Massage GunNow 15% OffEasy Shoe DeodorizerMarsheepy Activated Charcoal Odor Absorber BagsNow 31% OffSean Abrams was the Senior Editor, Growth and Engagement at Men’s Health. He’s a former hip hop dancer who likes long walks on the beach and large glasses of tequila. You can find his previous work at Maxim, Elite Daily, and AskMen.