He’s aiming to cover more miles in 72 hours than Elon’s finest people’s EV.

To be honest, running isn’t really in our wheelhouse. We’re car people here at CarBuzz, not athletes. While some of us may pick up heavy things from time to time, we’re certainly not on Robbie Balenger’s level. He’s a serious long-distance runner and athlete with an impressive list of accomplishments to his name. He’s also going to race a Tesla Model 3.

Before you loudly guffaw at the futility of this John Henry-esque challenge, you ought to read that list of accomplishments. The man literally pulled a Gump and ran across America. He’s also summited every 14,000-foot peak in Colorado (58 of them, by the way) on his way to completing something called the “Colorado Crush.”

In addition to those 58 peaks, he ran the 485-mile Colorado Trail in a hair over 11 days, completed the 58-mile Leadville Super Rush race, and then finished with the 100-mile Leadville Trail. In summation, that’s roughly 1,200 miles and 300,000 feet of elevation gain in 63 days. So, really, who exactly is the machine here?

Now, that’s not to say the challenge will be easy. Luckily for Balenger, he’s not racing something with more than the Model 3’s EPA-rated max 310-mile range. This 250+ mile journey is going to be tough, but at least he’s not racing a Tesla Model S. Here’s how the challenge works: This morning, about 250 miles outside Austin, Texas, Balenger and the Tesla set off. They ran together for the first mile and then went their separate ways.

From there, the base Model 3 will go until it’s out of juice. After that, Robbie has 72 hours to beat however far the Tesla went. The car is a base Model 3, at least from what we can tell, and as a result, the range could be less than the EPA’s figure, which did not use a base car. At the time of this article’s writing (2:17 PM EST), Balenger is already eight miles in, and no updates have been given on the Tesla’s status. You can follow along on Balenger’s Instagram.

Balenger prepared for the race by carbo-loading prior to the 7:30 AM start on the 11th. It’s a tactic used by endurance athletes the world over. Effectively, by consuming high-carb foods like pizza (which is exactly what Balenger used), your body will have a surplus of carbohydrates to consume for energy. Sponsor Ten Thousand, an athletic wear company, expects the race to run until April 13th, supposing Balenger doesn’t end things early. The man is a machine, after all.