'You may die,' but that's part of the point

Bruce Allentuck carries a 50-pound oak limb on his shoulder through the Potomac woods as he trains for the 2011 Death Race. Every 10 minutes, he drops the limb and does 50 push-ups on it. (For The Washington Post)

By Lenny Bernstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 10, 2011

Bruce Allentuck wants you to know he is a regular guy. He is not a Navy SEAL. He is not a physical trainer. He is a 45-year-old married father of three, owner of a small landscaping business, resident of a pleasant middle-class neighborhood in North Potomac.

Except that he is compelled, for reasons he explains in simple terms, to determine how much punishment he can inflict on his body and mind. That is why he was crunching through six miles of ankle-deep snow in the woods recently, lugging a three-foot, 50-pound length of solid oak. Why he recently ran a third of a mile in nine minutes carrying two 40-pound buckets of gravel. Why he runs five miles in a creek with a 60-pound truck tire slung over his shoulder.

It is why he is the only person from the Washington area headed to Vermont in June to run the 2011 Death Race, the sixth year of a competition so unimaginably cruel that the organizers require the 200 carefully selected entrants to sign a three-word waiver that reads simply, "You may die."

"I just want to see if I can push through and do it," said Allentuck, who has completed seven marathons, four ultramarathons, three Ironman triathlons, a 4.4-mile Chesapeake Bay swim, and 30 to 40 other triathlons of various lengths.

(More here.)