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The Speed Project is an unsanctioned relay race from Los Angeles to Las Vegas that ends up being anywhere from 280-340 miles (or maybe more for the folks who had to double back on account of wildfire this year). No set route, no rules, no spectators, no prize money. Scoring an invite is still more of an art than a science. It’s instagrammable, and yes, easy to roll your eyes at it from the outside. Believe me, I’ve been the eye roller. But once you’re in it, that version of it doesn’t hold up. It’s just serious, shared effort, sustained longer than feels reasonable.

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I was weirdly nervous driving the Dustbus down to LA. Am I just a sponsor or part of the team? I knew we had some fast runners but I had no idea about the competition. Though as another Mojave traveler famously quipped, “buy the ticket, take the ride.”

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A mutual friend in Boulder had connected me to Jake, one of the team captains, and I'd said yes before I fully understood what I was agreeing to. I met people throughout the day in LA, at TSP check-in and back at the team Airbnb that night, runners and crew filtering in from all four time zones. Brendan, my close friend and the team photographer, was the one familiar face. Everyone else was a name I was still matching to a person.

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