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Peter Frick-Wright: From ���ϳԹ��� Magazine, this is The ���ϳԹ��� Podcast.

The JFK 50-Mile Ultra, in Washington County, Maryland, is the oldest 50-mile race in the country.

Audio from JFK 50-Mile Ultra: Runners, on your mark! [shot and crowd cheers]

Peter Frick-Wright: It was first held in the spring of 1963, and it was one of many that took place that year as part of President John F. Kennedy’s push to make the nation more fit. There was a perception at the time, as there almost always is, that Americans were getting soft, becoming lazy, that the incoming generation wasn’t developing the proper grit, cause they were so glued to their new TV screens.

Today, the JFK 50 is dominated by runners, like any weekend ultra, but back then it was more of a walk. Boy scouts did it in uniform. Homemakers took a few days off. Even President Kennedy's brother, Robert, walked 50 miles along the canals of DC in his suit and leather loafers. It was a thing.

Anyway, the 50-mile craze quickly died down and became not-a-thing, and Kennedy’s fitness legacy ended up being the presidential fitness test, those shuttle runs and chin up sessions you hated doing in middle school.

But in many ways, those 50-mile walks were successful at raising awareness. Since then, as a country, our understanding of the importance of fitness has never gone away, even as we complain about the lack of it in our youth, now glued to Fortnite.

But did you know that Kennedy was actually stealing that whole idea of the 50-mile fitness test from someone else? Producer Robbie Carver has more.

Robbie Carver: There's a phrase you'll hear a lot in athletic circles, usually uttered by men clearly in the top tier of the fitness triangle as way to humblebrag. They'll say they completed some feat or other "off the couch," meaning without having trained for the event. To hear them tell it, one day they're just eating cheetos and watching reruns of the office, and the next moment they're sending a V10. You're meant to be impressed.

The phrase is also meant to temper expectations. ‘I'd have done better,’ someone might say, ‘if I hadn't tried to run that 10k off the couch.’

You're meant to be unimpressed.

But underneath both of these is the basic point of what 'off the couch' means, that your base level of fitness, on any given day, is capable of only so much. The question is, how much is that, and where would we find an average american man to test it out for us?

Tom Vanderbilt: My name is Tom Vanderbilt. I'm a contributing editor at ���ϳԹ���.

Robbie: Tom Vanderbilt is a bit of a connoisseur of quirky fitness stories. He recently wrote about learning to jump his mountain bike as an adult, for example, and once covered the trend of “everesting” ski hills, hiking up the mountain and taking the chairlift back down until you’ve covered the vertical equivalent of Everest. All 29,000 feet, none of the glory.

Tom: I should say ahead of time that I'm not really a ultra marathoner. I once ran a marathon. I'm not really a distance runner or anything like that.

Robbie: So one day while poking around for his next story, he came across a very curious executive order by President Theodore Roosevelt

Tom: It was just some sort of internet rabbit hole, that one thing led to another and I came across this, uh, this executive order. And, uh, I think what, you know, it might've just struck me as, you know, historically interesting or something.

Robbie: Executive Order No. 989 was titled “Marine Corps Officers’ Physical Fitness.” Every 2 years, officers would be tested on their ability to ride a horse 90 miles within 3 days time, and then again on their ability to walk 50 miles within a 20 hour time limit, though also completed within 3 days' time.

Tom: Roosevelt was in the waning, uh, you know, months of his administration, and this is the time often when these executive orders, which really have not that much actual power, they're more sort of, you know, whims and interests of the president, but he thought that his military branches were getting a bit soft.

Robbie: Roosevelt had famously been a Rough rider during the Spanish American War, and had built his reputation on physical and mental fortitude. It had been many years since the last war, and he feared that his army was becoming more bureaucrat than soldier. Their couch, so to speak, was getting too comfortable. And that worried him. And so came order 989.

Tom: It was supposed to be within the capability of their existing training. It wasn't something that you were supposed to train up for. He wanted his troops essentially to be in that state of readiness.

Robbie: And as part of the publicity for the fitness requirements, Roosevelt himself, 51 years old at the time, mounted his horse Roswell and set off into the freezing rain for a 90 mile romp.

Tom: We know that he himself did the horse challenge and rode from D.C. to Virginia's, uh, Fauquier County, and I think it's something like 14 hours, I believe, and just there and back, it was a, it was a hard ride, and he, uh, declared it at the end to be bully, which was one of his, you know, favorite adjectives, of course.

Robbie: So Roosevelt himself was prepared for the challenge. The military, however, wasn't prepared for Roosevelt.

Tom: If you read some of the, the Navy's own publications, for example, there were, you know, people coming out and saying that this would lead to depression amongst the officers, that it would, it would, you know, morale would suffer. Uh, this was just not a good idea.

Robbie: The surgeon general went as far as to state that the order would put officers lives at risk. Almost immediately after leaving office, Roosevelt's fitness test was overturned, replaced with a much more modest set of criteria such as reducing those 50 miles to 10. The order became a forgotten aside to a presidency chock full of wild stories, until Kennedy, perhaps seeking to channel some of Teddy's robust manliness, revived the idea briefly in 60's. But even that has been more or less forgotten, and the final trickle down of Roosevelt's bold attempt to toughen the tushes of our couch sitters is how fast an eighth grader can run shuttles.

But the order stayed in the history books, and something about it tickled Tom’s fancy.

Tom: It just seemed sort of a more approachable to me than something then say, if you had asked me to run a 50 mile ultra marathon. That I would not necessarily want to do off the couch out of my house.

Robbie: This idea, of off the couch, wasn't just a convenient way for Tom to avoid long hours of training. It was essential to the core idea Roosevelt was putting forth.

Tom: I think today we often feel like we need to train for these sorts of events, you know, train very specifically, like, you know, a 26-week marathon program or something like that. Versus the idea of just, just trying to maintain a kind of base level of fitness that you could, if called upon, undergo something like this sort of challenge and give it, give it a reasonable go. And that, I think, you know, Roosevelt had that sort of… Again, because this idea of athletic training wasn't really such a prominent thing in his day, He just, he called it the strenuous life, and he just was always giving things a go.

Robbie: So that's the idea. 3 days to complete 50 miles in 20 hours of walking, off the couch, with a bully attitude. Tom doesn't consider himself a runner, or even a hiker, but rather a cyclist. He's 54, in generally good shape but not training for anything specifically. He'd be the perfect litmus test for Roosevelt's challenge, the American Male giving it a go.

Tom: In my challenge, I chose for whatever masochistic reason to try to do this all at once.

Robbie: With the What decided, the next thing to tackle was the where. Should he do 50 miles of the Adirondacks?

Tom: I found this place in the Adirondacks, um, called Cranberry Lake, which was actually almost a perfect 50 mile loop. And you can get a badge if you complete the hike. Of course, you know, people take three days to do this and, uh, you know, so that, but it's quite a long drive.

Robbie: Or maybe just suffer 200 laps of his local high school track

Tom: Maybe even, you know, stop at home for lunch and it would be sort of cozy, but it didn't quite seem, you know, it just didn't, it seemed to lack the Rooseveltian spirit.

Robbie: With the desire to keep his favorite roughback from turning in his grave, Tom turned to a cycling friend, famous for his routeplanning, and asked for a little GPS magic. A 50-mile loop, starting and finishing at his front door.

Tom: And he actually created this, this amazing, uh, route that, you know, I'm in the state of New Jersey. This is a place, you know, some of the stereotypes are true. There's, you know, giant highways. There's, you know, it's hard to take a left turn. I mean, it's very dense. It's the most densely populated state in the country. You don't think this is prime hiking territory. But he came up with this route that just strung together all of these different, you know, local sort of forests and and state parks and nature preserves. And all that. And suddenly I had this I had my answer Um, I was just going to leave from my front door do this try to do this hike and then and then come home.

Robbie: He would get off his couch, walk out his front door, and just keep going. Not so hard, right?

Tom: I thought I was pretty much going to nail it because I, I just had this perhaps somewhat naive view that, you know, I, I do love to walk and I can, I can, you know. Walking seems to take very little effort to me and I just thought, well, if I just, it's, you know, not the five mile walk, but it's just 10 of those strung together.

Robbie: If walking five miles takes basically zero effort for Tom, doing that ten times is, mathematically, still pretty much zero effort. After the break, turns out that's not exactly how it works.

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Tom during his walk: It’s 5:36 in the morning. I’m about to go on Teddy Roosevelt’s 50 mile hike from my front door

Tom: We started at 6am in my driveway. I probably, you know, could have started a little earlier. Didn't want to necessarily punish myself though. But it was, uh, it was, it was a beautiful day although I should say, it was going to get very warm.

Tom’s friend Paul: Have you hike 50 miles in one day?

Robbie: Tom set off early with his pathfinding buddy Paul joining him. It was early October, but rather than feeling like the first days of fall, there was still a summer scent in the air.

Tom: You know, the first, the first bit was, was pretty easy. It was just sort of this, uh, converted old railway that runs next to Fairleigh Dickinson University. And it's just a very popular walking trail.

Robbie: In his running shorts and t-shirt, Tom set a brisk pace, keeping the end goal of finishing around 9 or 10 in the evening in mind. And pretty quickly, he began to feel that they were on some kind of adventure.

Tom: This just isn't something that most people do. So we were, you know, kind of going through these, these parts of the trail that, that seemed to vanish. And then they would sort of pop out in, in like a switching yard of a railway, which seemed to be semi private property. And we're getting all kinds of strange looks. And we, you know, passed through these parks very early in the morning and there weren't really kids there. There were sort of like sketchy characters kind of hanging out and so it had, you know, the beginning was a bit, you know, sort of urban, uh, adventure. And, uh, this is still New Jersey. So you might be in like a pretty thick set of woods for a moment, but then the trail would emerge into basically like a suburban office park, uh, parking lot. And then, or next to a really busy highway or some other kind of very urban thing.

Robbie: We've talked a few times on this show about the concept of microadventures, a term popularized by the adventurer Alistair Humphrey, and the value of finding novel experiences close to home. You don't need 6 months and a corporate sponsor to get the impact of a great adventure. Sometimes, you just need to take that first step.

Tom: something that occurs to me now is like, this is just something I’ve ever done in my life, just left spun, you know, somewhat spontaneously from my front door and went out for a really, uh, long walk. I've done all kinds of, you know, events that were very structured and all that, or, you know, had a very clear destination. But, um, so I was sort of just opening this strange, uh, door that I wasn't really sure where it was going to uh, lead.

Robbie: Tom soon left Paul behind, wanting to keep a brisk pace that his friend's bum knee couldn't handle.

Tom during his walk: It’s taking me a little more time than expected, but the good news is that all bodily systems seem to be functioning well so far, so we’ll see.

Robbie: And so it was that he found himself alone, walking in near complete isolation in one of the most populated states in the country.

Tom: This, this was a pure flow experience and I was really completely losing track of time. My worldview was just down to the path in front of me looking for the next blue or yellow blaze on a tree. Even that process, you know, it felt so kind of analog and wonderful and rewarding. Just, you know, this sort of primitive way finding. And, um, kind of just felt parts of my brain that hadn't been that activated in a while. Just, just, uh, reemerging and having that, uh, time alone.

And yeah, it's not like I had any kind of great revelations or thoughts out on the trail. And I've heard this from other long distance hikers, you know, it's just in some ways having the, the freedom from thought, you know, to, to not think about anything and just kind of this, except this, this sort of rote survival and trying to get to some point that is, is out there on the horizon and, and then just kind of really tuning into the, the landscape and, uh, and the silence.

Robbie: It wasnt the experience Tom thought he'd have, leaving from the front door of his highway-happy state, but that made it all the more special. Thing was, there was still a long way to go, and that going was starting to get tough.

Tom: And as I got deeper out, it then got into, you know, forest with elevation, rocky, single track. As I continued to go, it really started to become pretty overgrown with, uh, you know, sort of dense brambles and the like. And the trail, uh, you know, such as it was, uh, would disappear and I was trying to like kind of bushwhack through these brambles just, just with my body.

And, and so after about 20 miles, I was already, um, pretty scratched up and, uh, bleeding. And so it was, you know, I was definitely, there were definitely moments when I was, I was regretting not having done the simple loop around my house. It was just like ankle breaking and it was just, it really completely slowed my pace and, and threw me, um, for a loop. And, um, that's sort of where I found myself at my lunch break at about the halfway point, um, feeling kind of already starting to feel the, uh, the effects of this.

Tom on his walk: It’s around 12 o'clock. I’m around 21 miles in, uhh near a nice set of waterfalls which look very inviting, but no time to take a dip I’ve got 29 miles to go, so onward we press.

Robbie: Part of Roosevelt's initial declaration was that the sergeants would spend part of the 50-mile trek in double time, sort of a military jog. To honor that, and to make back some time, Tom broke into a run here and there, forgetting that he is not, in fact, a runner.

Tom: And that might've sort of thrown my, uh, body into a bit of turmoil as well, because again, I haven't really done that much running lately.

Robbie: Torn up and dirty, his body sore from impact he hadn't trained for, Tom pushed ahead. It was still just a walk, after all, right? All he had to do was keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Tom: But the real problem here, and this is a, the kind of classic, you know, lack of preparation was that, uh, I was carrying basically a small, uh, Osprey backpack, uh, with 2.5 liter water bladder that I don't think was even fully filled.

One thing I should say about Paul's route is that it's New Jersey. You're never more than a mile away from a bagel store, but somehow this route he crafted just didn't go anywhere near a place where I could logically refresh my supplies.

Robbie: So Tom is about halfway through his 50 mile walk and he's completely out of water. The day is getting hot, about 84 degrees, and he's really starting to feel it.

Tom on his walk: 28.2 miles, it’s 3 in the afternoon. This is the longest I’ve ever been on foot at one time. So we’re pushing into new territory and feeling a bit wobbly.

Tom: If you've ever, you know, made a pizza and got a ball of mozzarella cheese and you sort of like start to pull it apart and you see those like strands, those strands of cheese as you're pulling it, that's sort of how my muscles were feeling. Just these like long stretched things that were getting just pulled too tautly and were beginning to shred.

Robbie: Some quick searching on Google Maps showed that the town of Ralston, which was on his route just a few miles ahead, had a volunteer fire station. Maybe, he thought, he could fill up his water there.

Tom: And so approaching Ralston, I was feeling, starting to feel pretty beat, but I thought the firehouse would be just a great place to stop, talk to someone for a minute, get some water and then, and then press on.

So it was an incredible letdown when I sort of got there and it was just, it was just nothing.

Robbie: The firestation was shuttered, and as far as Tom could tell, there wasn't a damn thing around that could serve as a makeshift aid station.

Tom: I'm sweating. I'm dirty. I'm bleeding. I probably look half crazy. Kind of, you know, barely dressed and people, I think, you know, they're not really, going to necessarily welcome me.

So I just tried to keep trudging on and by cruel fate, this is where there was one part of the hike that had this section where I really had to walk on the road for quite a while. I think 3 or 4, maybe even 5 miles. And this is sort of like a high speed. rural road with not much of a shoulder.

So I, uh, uh, just another weird dance I found myself getting into was that, so what I thought it's better to walk against traffic so you can see the car coming, but then I would sort of approach a hill and I would think, well, the car comes over the hill, they can't see me. So I kept switching back and forth.

Meanwhile, the sun is just beating down at me and the cars are blasting by me and thinking like, who's this idiot that's just out here, um, walking. And there's just not a drop of water to be found.

By about mile 34, I was in the throes of just full onset dehydration. I was, um, just completely cooked and, uh, kept having to sit down. It was beginning to get dizzy. I was trying to eat, but that really wasn't helping anything.

Robbie: Tom sat down, and gave up. He called Paul, who had stopped at mile 20, and asked for help. Paul came with supplies and a pep talk, but before long, Tom decided to climb in the car.

Tom on his walk: Mile 31, 4 o'clock roughly, I had to pull the plug, at least for a temporary rest. And Paul, graciously showed up my knight in shining armor with coconut water, coke, beer. I’m going to take a break at home for a while and try to restart and get close to that 50 in one day. Yeah, I’m a little disappointed, I’m feeling aches that are new to me, but that’s life. 

Robbie: But once Tom got home, it was pretty clear he was not going out again.

Tom: I was just, uh, shivering in, in bed and, you know, just in no condition to, uh, do anymore.

Robbie: Off the couch, on a hot day without proper gear or hydration, Tom learned he could walk 34 miles in around twelve hours. He didn't return home with the Rooseveltian swagger of a man who had tamed the elements. He got his ass handed to him. But he kind of liked it.

Tom: Going through something like that was just such a novel experience. I just was moving through territory that I'd never really been through, even though it was so close to my house. And just just having this experience that almost felt out of body sometimes. I just had woken up that Tuesday morning, like any other morning, instead of going to my computer to sit down, I was, I was just having this adventure from my doorstep.

I didn't have to, you know, it wasn't something I had to fly to or go to some jungle or, or, or national park. It was just like right outside my door was this entire, uh, you know, natural world that I could, you know, sort of move through and just be alone with my thoughts.

I mean, that was, that was the thing I really took away from this was just, just the ability to kind of, you know, do something completely different and out of the ordinary with, with minimal planning and equipment. And just having this, uh, experience that, that really sort of, sort of punched above its weight as it were. I was kind of unearthing this new cartography of my, of my local landscape. And I'm sure people have hiked and biked and walked many sections of the route I did, but I'm almost positive no one has ever done that entire piece that I did.

So in my own weird way, I was, you know, kind of this explorer, like it was not, not a big adventure like Alistair Humphreys talks about. I wasn't like crossing Antarctica on foot for the first time or something like that. But you know, again, this is just not, not bad for an average, um, Tuesday.

Robbie: Tom may have failed in his bid to walk 50 miles in a day, but if you remember, Roosevelt's original order gave soldiers 3 days to complete the distance. He still had time to make the president proud

Tom: Let’s see it took about 12 hours so I still had eight hours to complete 16 miles. I thought about going back out that night even, but I just. I was just so drained in various ways. I thought, well, I'll just wake up in the morning.

And then the next day I sort of banged out another 14 or so just on some of these more local, uh, wooded trails. And that was, you know, felt like, uh, not as challenging. Uh, but of course trying to, I'd only given myself the one day logistically. So then the next day came along and I had all this sort of work stuff. I had to take my daughter to school, take her to some events. Uh, so trying to try to fit this hike in, into the day became a little bit of a challenge

Robbie: Toward the evening, Tom and his wife hiked another 4 together, but he still had just a bit more to do. And, of course, he was back in family mode. So he finished his grand walking adventure in the most urban dad way possible.

Tom: I’m in Stop & Shop, I’ve got about .4 miles left to go to complete the challenge. My wife claims you can get something like 2000 steps in just by shopping here because the place is giant. I’m going to see if I can wrap it up here.

Tom: So I basically like finished it in Stop & Shop and then in the parking lot, because Stop & Shop is a huge shopping center. So you can actually cover a lot of ground up and down those aisles. Yeah, it was kind of a fitting New Jersey touch, I think to finish in a parking lot. But that’s how it happened.

Tom: It’s 9:03 pm, I just got to 5.77 miles which makes it exactly 50 in about 14 hours and change. I feel a little bit dirty about that, like it’s cheating. But am I wrong to think that… I’m with my wife, Jancee Dunn, who valiantly accompanied me on this leg. Are those real miles or are they junk miles? Junk food miles?

Jancee Dunn: I say miles are miles. You did it. You scared people at stop and shop because of the way you were lurching around. 

Robbie: And so Tom finished Roosevelt’s challenge, humbled but also proud, having gotten off his couch and out into a world he didn’t even realize was there to explore.

Tom: I think what was surprising was just the idea that I could do this from my front door and have this really sort of incredible adventure just out of, out of almost nowhere. Just this, this idea, like given, given a simple instruction by a dead president to hike 50 miles in 20 hours. And somehow I just decided I had to rise to the, this call.

Robbie: Why did Tom feel like he had to answer this call?

Maybe because the man who made it, Teddy Roosevelt, had debilitating asthma as a child. He had poor eyesight and spent much of his adult life trying to control his weight, but never quite succeeding. He was, to put it bluntly, not a physically gifted individual.

But what he learned through his life of strenuous effort is that, really, who cares? He chose instead to get as much out of his ordinary body as he could. His life was a dare to the ordinary man on the couch. Any of you can do this, he would say. What are you waiting for?

Tom: It just took walking out my front door on a Tuesday morning in my  otherwise, you know, fairly unremarkable New Jersey suburban town to sort of open this whole new experience.

Peter Frick-Wright: Robbie Carver is one of the co-founders of The ���ϳԹ��� Podcast.

This episode was written, produced, and sound designed by Robbie, with editing by me, Peter Frick-Wright.

The ���ϳԹ��� Podcast is made possible by ���ϳԹ���+ subscribers. Learn more about all the  benefits of becoming a member and sign up at outsideonline.com/outsideplus.