Man Says His Body Started ‘Shutting Down’ While Biking 3,000 Miles Across America in 12 Days on Just 12 Hours of Sleep (Exclusive)
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Credit: Courtesy of Alvaro Núñez
NEED TO KNOW
- Alvaro Núñez completed the grueling Race Across America to honor his father, who was diagnosed with prostate cancer
- He faced extreme physical and mental challenges, including sleep deprivation and hallucinations, during the 12-day, 3,000-mile race
- Núñez documented his journey in the film The Road to Why, now streaming, to inspire others to find their purpose
Alvaro Núñez isn’t a professional cyclist, so when he first heard about Race Across America (RAAM) — a 3,000-mile bike race that takes place over 12 days and 170,000 feet of elevation — it admittedly scared him.
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“The idea of riding ‘the world’s toughest bicycle race’ with more than 3,000 miles across the country almost nonstop felt way beyond anything I had done before,” the 32-year-old tells PEOPLE.
However, the “race took on a completely different meaning” when his dad was diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer. Núñez was going to pull out of the race to spend time with him, but they made a promise to one another: “If you don’t quit, I won’t quit.”
Alvaro NúñezCredit: Courtesy of Alvaro Núñez
“From that moment, it stopped being just a race. He had his battle, I had mine, and in a strange way we were going through them together,” Núñez shares.
While getting ready for the race, Núñez spent “a lot of long, lonely hours on the bike.”
“I had to build myself into a cyclist capable of being on a bike day after day, while still running my businesses and living a normal life,” Núñez shares. “But the biggest preparation wasn’t physical. I knew there would eventually be a point where my body would want to stop, so I spent a lot of time preparing mentally for that moment. You can train your legs, but for something like RAAM, you also have to train your mind.”
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When that moment inevitably came during the race and he wanted to quit, he simply thought about his dad.
“There were moments when my body was shutting down, when I was hallucinating, in pain, exhausted, and quitting would have been completely understandable,” he shares. “But I kept coming back to our promise: ‘If you don’t quit, I won’t quit.’ “
“It gave me perspective. I had chosen to be there. My dad hadn’t chosen cancer,” he continues. “Whenever I started feeling sorry for myself, I remembered why I was doing it and just focused on moving forward. Sometimes that meant thinking about the next state. Sometimes the next mile. And sometimes literally just the next pedal stroke.”
Alvaro NúñezCredit: Courtesy of Alvaro Núñez
During the 12-day race, Núñez slept roughly 12 hours total. He says that “sleep became incredibly strategic” and “most of the time it wasn’t a normal night of sleep.”
“It might be a very short stop wherever the crew could get me down safely, sleep for a little bit, wake up, eat, get checked, and get back on the bike,” Núñez shares. “Toward the end, I was so sleep-deprived that the line between being awake and dreaming started disappearing. I was hallucinating and my brain wasn’t processing things normally anymore.”
Alvaro Núñez’s fatherCredit: Courtesy of Alvaro Núñez
The thing that kept him going was his “why.”
“My dad was a huge part of it, but so was my team. RAAM might officially be a solo race, but there is nothing solo about accomplishing something like that,” he says. “I had people around me taking care of me when I wasn’t capable of taking care of myself. That experience reinforced something I believe deeply: when your body has nothing left, purpose can take you places that motivation simply can’t.”
Still, the hardest part was “watching myself slowly lose control of my own body and mind.”
“I expected pain. I expected exhaustion. What I didn’t fully understand was what extreme sleep deprivation would do to me. There were moments of hallucinations, nerve pain, crashes, physical shutdown and cognitive deterioration,” Núñez reiterates. “Eventually you stop negotiating with discomfort because discomfort becomes your normal. And emotionally, knowing what my dad was going through at the same time added another layer to everything.”
Along with the feelings of “fear,” “pain” and “frustration,” however, there were also moments of “joy” and “gratitude.” Oftentimes, those came “within the same hour.”
“You become very stripped down in an experience like that. There’s no energy left for pretending. You see yourself at your strongest and weakest, sometimes minutes apart. It was incredibly humbling,” Núñez shares.
After pushing his body to the limit, he completed the solo race in 11 days, 23 hours and 3 minutes.
Núñez shares that while the “finish was incredible” for him, “the most rewarding part wasn’t crossing the finish line.”
“It was realizing how many people had crossed it with me in one way or another — my dad, my family, my crew, my friends and everyone who believed in the journey.”
Alvaro Núñez and his fatherCredit: Courtesy of Alvaro Núñez
Núñez says his favorite thing about his father is his “heart.”
“My dad has always been someone who gives a lot of himself to the people he loves. Watching him go through cancer also showed me a different kind of strength. Not the loud kind. The quiet kind that gets up every day and keeps going even when life gives you something you never asked for,” he says. “I’ve done a lot of difficult things in my life, but his fight gave me a completely different perspective on what being strong actually means.”
Although his dad is still undergoing treatment and it has “been a very challenging journey for him and for our family,” Núñez notes that “thankfully he is doing much better now.”
While having his “why” didn’t “make the road easier,” it made it “the road worth taking.”
“I used to think resilience was mostly about being mentally tough enough to push through pain. RAAM taught me that there’s something much deeper than that. When you know who and what you’re doing something for, you can find strength in places you didn’t know existed. And sometimes you don’t know why. Your why finds you.”
Núñez documented the entire experience and turned it into the documentary The Road to Why, which is now on Apple TV and Amazon. He says that seeing The Road to Why come to life has “given the experience another meaning.”
“The race ended at the finish line, but the story didn’t. If somebody watches the film and walks away thinking about their own reason to keep going through something difficult, then everything we went through becomes bigger than a race,” Núñez shares.
He hopes that people who followed his journey and watch the documentary know that they don’t have to ride a bike across the United States to relate to it.
“Everybody has their own version of that road. It could be cancer, losing someone, building something, raising a family, starting over, or simply going through a season where life feels heavier than you expected,” Núñez shares. “The bicycle and the race are really just the backdrop. For me, the story is about love, family, purpose, the people we surround ourselves with, and finding a reason to keep moving forward when stopping would be easier.”
“If someone watches the film and leaves asking themselves, ‘What is my why?’ then I think we accomplished something much more meaningful than documenting a bike race.”
Read the original article on People