DEATH VALLEY, California - More people have climbed Mount Everest than have finished the Badwater 135, an ultramarathon through California's Death Valley.
It goes without saying, but we'll write it here anyway: It's the toughest footrace in the country.
Temperatures regularly soar above a scorching 116 degrees Farenheit and the 135-mile course is non-stop from Death Valley to Mount Whitney, California. Not to mention there are three mountain ranges to be covered in between, for a total of 14,600 feet in vertical ascent (and 6,100 feet cumulative descent).
Very few have completed the challenge.
It takes the most fit runners on the planet nearly two days to complete. The 2015 winner, from Lincoln, Nebraska, finished in 23 hours and 27 minutes.
Jason Romero is just the second visually impaired athlete to finish the ultra-race. Ever.
Romero, who is legally blind, completed Badwater in 39 hours, 59 minutes, and 59 seconds.
"It feels like a hairdryer is being blown directly on your face when the wind is blowing," he wrote 9NEWS in an email.
Romero is an accomplished ultrarunner, and he does it all with Retinitis Pigmentosa, a disorder he's had since he was 14, which causes him to gradually lose his vision.
Romero lives and trains in Denver. He ran Badwater to help raise awareness not only for a local homeless shelter at Christ's Body Ministries, but to show athletes with impairments everywhere that there are no limits to what they can accomplish.
Up next for Romero? The Spartathalon: 152 miles from Athens to Sparta.
(© 2015 KUSA)
