Cold sweat clings to Vince Georgescu’s back as he stands on the shoulder of an empty road circling his hips. Dressed in black spandex shorts, a florescent green high visibility vest, and a pair of unreleased Merrell Pro Morph running shoes, the 33-year-old runner from Salt Lake City, Utah, is ready to put in a mile at full speed. He’s just waiting for the cue—a flickering white light to penetrate the low-clinging morning fog.

Georgescu doesn’t know exactly where he is, but he has a long way to go from where his journey began within eyesight of the U.S.-Canada border. Exactly 42 minutes ago at dawn, in the rural village of Rouses Point, New York, he launched into a feverish sprint, gripping a small GPS device as his feet thumped across a desolate stretch of asphalt. Georgescu’s muscles stiffened in the crisp 59-degree air after he halted less than six minutes later and scurried into a silver Chrysler Pacifica that was shadowing his footsteps. 

It’s just after sunrise on a Friday in mid-May, and Georgescu is in the midst of Southbound 400 (SB400), an unsanctioned 400-mile stage relay that traces the Empire State Trail—the longest multi-use trail in the United States. The route spans New York State, including to the southern tip of Manhattan, where SB400 finishes. Those that sign the race waiver understand that SB400 is an at-your-own-risk undertaking. One of the most underground and niche ultra endurance competitions in the country, there are no permits nor a governing body overseeing the event, which takes place largely on country roads and highway shoulders before finishing on the west perimeter of Manhattan.

“I like exploring uncharted waters,” says 26-year-old Chloe Towns. “This doesn’t scare me.” Towns is here to compete in the third edition of the race and also to helm a team she assembled and coined “Loose Footage,” comprising eight friends (including Georgescu), all of whom are amateur distance runners mostly from Los Angeles. 

The inaugural SB400 took place in 2023, under the direction of Aingeru Zorita, a high-fashion photographer and life coach based in New York City. He had devised the ultra relay in collaboration with a few friends in the trail running scene. Zorita wanted to produce an unorthodox running challenge after a transcendental experience he had in the Sahara, in southern Morocco, where he ran the equivalent of six marathons consecutively in a stage race known as Marathon des Sables. Soon after the humbling encounter in what is regarded as the toughest foot race on Earth—during which Zorita weathered a sandstorm in the midst of 48 hours of running—he landed on the idea for a self-supported 400-mile relay that would involve 10 invited teams of eight people contending across three days.

“I believe there’s a need for experiences of a different caliber in the running world,” says Zorita. “People are hungry for new ways of running, hungry for vulnerability.”

Generally calm and quiet, the picturesque Empire State Trail can be a psychologically and physically disruptive journey during SB400. The race, which Zorita has even described as “nonsensical,” demands that runners deconstruct their traditional concept of racing and prioritize team synergy over individual competition. One race participant likens SB400 to mental camping due to the unavoidable need to pause exterior distractions of daily life and instead focus on tuning into the present moment. 

As much as SB400 is a physical and mental challenge, it also requires weeks of master planning. Teams must arrange most of their own logistics, including their transportation, food and water, and even first-aid supplies. Race organizers provide pitched tents at designated campsites for two of the three stages. And while they also issue a map, the route is entirely unmarked. If a team steers off course, it’s their own responsibility to navigate back on track.

As teams make their way onto the Empire State Trail, it’s not uncommon to run counter to semi-trucks and away from stray dogs. When they pass through numerous small towns along the way to New York City, they’re greeted with striking views of the Hudson Valley, a region known for its breathtaking rolling hills and verdant farmland that border the 315-mile Hudson River, one of the longest rivers in the U.S. Team members exchange running and carrying a handheld GPS tracker as they challenge their speed and endurance across asphalt and gravel roads, collectively accumulating roughly 135 miles a day. Each runner will log approximately 50 miles by the end of the race. 

Since its inception, the unconventional nature of SB400 continues to draw a certain type of runner, described by Towns as “people who like the spirit of adventure.” It is a race that explores human potential, she adds, “a pursuit of how far we can really go.” 

And the Loose Footage team is here to prove that they can go pretty far, pretty quickly. 

STAGE ONE: GRIT AND SPEED 

Loose Footage member Rosa Kwak, 29, is breathless yet beaming as she sits in the team’s Chrysler Pacifica, which at the moment is scattered with yuzu-flavored energy gels, a family-size bag of Sour Patch Kids, and potato chips. Kwak just ran a mile in 6 minutes and 9 seconds, a pace she usually manages with ease. But right now, her heart rate is too high, consequently triggering an alert on her phone.

“This feels like a track workout,” says Kwak, as she tightens her shoelaces. She has only a few minutes to reset before logging her next mile. 

Just 24 hours ago, Kwak and her teammates took a red-eye flight from the west coast to New York City, after which they immediately drove six hours north toward the SB400 starting point. Despite jetlag enveloping everyone’s bodies, they assure each other of their readiness to embark on the unknown. 

At the moment, the team is just over an hour into stage one, a point-to-point journey that began at 5 a.m. on a rural corner flanked by power lines and just 400 meters from the U.S.-Canada border. The stage ends at the Granite Hill Lodge in Fort Ann, New York, where all race participants will camp overnight. 

Loose Footage is equipped for SB400 in the Pro Morph, a lightweight road-to-gravel shoe that will launch this summer, made by the American footwear brand Merrell. The company, which is traditionally known for producing high-performance hiking boots, but has also been making trail running shoes since the 80s, unveiled the Pro Morph a few months ago as its latest running footwear innovation. For Kwak and her cohorts, SB400 is a prime opportunity to showcase how well the Pro Morph performs on versatile terrain and for long distances. 

Like every team here, the goal today is to arrive within the race’s designated cutoff time of 18 hours. How they achieve it is up to each team. Because there are no set hand-off points in SB400, each team has the liberty to determine their own strategy. That is, the distance a runner will log and when to rotate someone on and off the course. Each team is permitted to have a crew of up to three people, a role that involves driving in parallel to the route as much as possible to ensure the runner-in-waiting is available for the next handoff. 

It’s incessant stop-and-go, as the distances can be as short as 400 meters, while some teams choose to run upwards of one mile for each handoff. Maintaining these respective increments for the duration of 135 miles each stage seems downright ludacris, but every team here insists it’s necessary to maximize their speed for an extended period. 

“This is all strategy,” says Alejandra Santiago, 32, a sub-three hour marathoner from L.A., who is here representing Loose Footage. “You’ve got to play the game.”

When the competition begins to divide within the hour, Loose Footage loses contact with the other teams, leaving them oblivious of their rivals’ status. That, however, only adds to what makes SB400 so stimulating and competitive—it’s like a blind chess match. When Towns crawls into the support car dripping with sweat, she reminds her team of their priority at the moment: to mentally lock in, and “run fast, eat, run fast,” she says. After Loose Footage tallies 43 miles, the team rotates in its other four team members, who had spent the past couple of hours resting in a camper van. Playfully nicknamed “The Whale,” the camper van functions as the team’s second support car, serving mainly as a place of respite and a refueling station. It’s stocked with provisions—ranging from cups of ready-to-serve jasmine rice, dried fruit, avocados, jerky, a cooler of deli meat, and Coca-Cola. 

After a portion of the Loose Footage team concludes their round of running, Georgescu immediately grazes the camper van, grabbing a piece of bread and slathering it with jelly and sunflower butter while another member of the team slices into an avocado. They will rest for the next couple of hours, slipping their legs into Normatec compression boots and napping before strapping into their Pro Morphs for another set of mile repeats. 

“I’m running comfortably,” Georgescu says in reference to his shoes. “Are they good at getting the job done? Absolutely.”

Kwak comments that the kicks are helping her push through what she describes as a day-long speed session, “holding threshold pace forever,” she says. While the effort doesn’t feel too hard physically, she says it seemingly requires more brain power compared to what she’d experience in a traditional road race. 

“This is a very tactical race,” Georgescu adds. “You don’t want to go too spicy today and pay for it tomorrow.”

Perhaps too high on energy, Loose Footage’s mile splits quicken as they progress deeper into the stage, with some runners logging swift miles of 5 minutes and 40 seconds. The team later agrees to reduce their handoff distance to every 800 meters until they conclude the stage. At 4:13 p.m., after having run for 13 hours and 46 minutes, Loose Footage completes the first leg of their pilgrimage. Despite their blistering average team pace of 6 minutes and 9 seconds, the mark files them as seventh overall, more than one hour behind the lead team from New York dubbed “Honest Work.”

“I don’t feel like I stepped too far out of my capabilities,” Georgescu says. “But I definitely went to the line.”

STAGE TWO: SUFFERING AND STAMINA

It’s not yet noon the following day when Towns begins chugging a can of Red Bull. “I better be bouncing off the walls,” she says, chucking. She slips on her sunglasses and stands on the side of a road, ready to sprint for nearly one mile.  

The day began with a chill hanging in the air at the campsite in Fort Ann, where every team slept two to three people per tent. The race organizers arranged a breakfast spread that included piles of cinnamon rolls, focaccia, overnight oats, and a flow of the powdered greens supplement AG1, a brand that is sponsoring SB400. 

Unlike the previous day, when mileage as short as 400 meters was a manageable game plan, the nature of the route for stage two requires runners to revise their strategies. Today, the route involves areas that are inaccessible to cars—a multitude of canals, creeks, and woods. Endurance is crucial, Towns points out. Loose Footage, which includes five women, appoints the team’s three men to tackle the longer segments. The 135-mile stage takes teams from the mouth of the campsite in Fort Ann to Kingston, New York, where they will arrive at another campsite on the grounds of Hutton Brickyards along the Hudson River.

Dan McMahon, 30, among Loose Footage’s fastest runners, begins the first leg with a 2.3-mile run, more than double yesterday’s intervals. But he handles it with ease, clocking a 5:40-minute mile before Towns takes over. Cushioned in her Pro Morphs, as she grabs the GPS device, her feet clap against the pavement, rocking her to 6:26-minute miles. The trail transitions from asphalt to gravel and back to asphalt, terrain the Loose Footage runners manage to their advantage. They leapfrog a few rival teams, careful to control their energy expenditures to have reserves for the final leg tomorrow. 

“There’s a lot I’m learning about pacing myself,” says Josh Pritz, the relay rookie who is here with Loose Footage to run his first team ultra. “Yesterday there was a lot of blow in the load,” he comments, adding that his quads are particularly sore after an afternoon spent surging down steep asphalt hills. Pritz, a six-time marathoner, admitted he had no idea what he was getting into when he agreed to be part of the team three months ago. Stage two, he says, is like the suspense of a track meet in the middle of nature. 

“It’s insane racing,” Pritz says. His pace has been widespread all morning—a mix of short bursts of speed between running for two-mile increments. Towns warns him to watch for stray dogs as he gets out of the car and readies himself for the next handoff. 

By early afternoon, the sky turns grey as the wind intensifies. They run up and down hills, adding to the fatigue that is already overwhelming their legs. But Loose Footage’s patience and careful strategy pays off when they reach the campsite at 4:36 p.m., bumping their ranking to fifth. Most of the team members have each individually run just over 30 miles to help bring Loose Footage to a two-day combined time of 27 hours and 23 minutes. But there is more work ahead, the final leg of the journey into New York City, which Town projects will be the most strategically challenging. 

STAGE THREE: CONTROLLED CHAOS 

Six electric bikes lay in an empty parking lot somewhere in the Bronx. Getting here, 15 miles from the finish line, involved hours of utter chaos, described by Pritz as “panic-inducing.” Too many on-the-fly decisions throughout the morning resulted in missed handoffs and members of the team logging extra miles. They burned energy as they attempted to chase down other teams in the process. 

Towns had anticipated that this stage, however, would be logistically trickier than the previous two days, and it would prove to challenge the team’s rhythm. Hours earlier as she sat in the car, her legs quivered. Cumulative fatigue. Everyone here, in fact, is registering soreness. But they will keep going.  

“I’m trying to keep myself unemotional right now since there’s a lot going on,” Santiago says. A burning sensation wraps her ankles. She suspects she unknowingly brushed against poison ivy during an earlier section, when she scrambled across overgrown foliage to access the trail. Though she badly wants to scratch her skin, instead she takes a few deep breaths. This moment, this day, is a test of patience. 

“Everybody’s tired,” Towns says. “But I love this flow we’re in.”

Pritz, a self-described meticulous person, adds that the race is not only teaching him patience both for himself and for his team, it’s also an ongoing practice of empathy for everyone’s decision making. Synergy is fundamental to a team’s success in SB400, “the special sauce,” Georgescu points out. 

Back in the Bronx, half of the Loose Footage team waits under warm sun, counting down for the remainder of the group to arrive. The plan is to cycle collectively during the homestretch on the West Side Highway, adjacent the Hudson River in New York City. As the final portion of the Empire State Trail, the path will lead to the finish line. The strategy is for one person to run as the rest of the team rides single-file, alternating handing off the GPS device and taking command of the unmanned bike every 800 meters.

No longer on peaceful country roads, their ears must adjust to streets filled with a cacophony of horns and the constant hum of car engines and chatty pedestrians. Traffic lights and a wrong turn slow the team’s progress reaching the West Side Highway. Their weary eyes reflect stress and confusion, and they ride mostly silent. By the time they reach the pedestrian path, all calms down and they resume a seamless rhythm, as though this particular part of the stage had been rehearsed.

The sky glows with soft golden hues as the day prepares to wind down. Loose Footage is also ready to wind down. The team passes by in parallel to iconic New York neighborhoods—Harlem, then the Upper West Side, to Hell’s Kitchen, followed by Chelsea, and Greenwich Village. The closer they creep to Battery Park, the boisterous cheers of rival teams amplifies. McMahon can’t help but vigorously shake a bottle of prosecco just moments after he and his teammates surge across the finish line, sealing the whirlwind expedition as the third fastest team overall. As he uncorks the sparking wine, the sweet fizzy gush douses the smiling crowd. There is much to celebrate.