600 Miles from San Francisco to Las Vegas: Team Rip Squad Runs The Spe

What Is The Speed Project?

There are no bibs. No timing chips. No officials standing at the finish line.

The Speed Project is something harder to define, and something you have to experience to truly understand.

Founded in 2013 by Nils Arend and Blue Benadum, TSP was built as a direct rejection of the polished, corporate world of organized racing. Arend, a German immigrant living in California, had fallen out of love with the marathon circuit: the sponsorship banners, the pace corrals, the rulebooks that told you exactly how to run. He wanted something rawer. So he asked a group of friends: what if we just ran from Los Angeles to Las Vegas?

In March 2013, six of them did exactly that. They met at the Santa Monica Pier, climbed into an RV, and started moving. The only real rule was to stay off the highways. What followed was more than 13,000 feet of climbing, a full night of running, and a push through the Mojave and the outskirts of Death Valley. About 41 hours after they started, they reached the Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign.

Someone brought a camera. The footage made the rounds. Runners and run clubs started reaching out, wanting in. Just like that, a one-time personal challenge turned into something much harder to get into.

To run it, you have to be invited.

The main event still covers 340 miles from the Santa Monica Pier to the Las Vegas Strip, relay-style, teams trading off sections day and night while the rest recover in a chase vehicle. Heat. Cold. Wind. Miles that mess with your head long before they mess with your legs. The format has since spread beyond California, with editions like The Speed Project Atacama and The Speed Project CHX running from Chamonix to Marseille.

There's no prize money. No podium. No certification of completion beyond the knowledge that you did it.

TSP challenges norms, centers discomfort, and pushes runners to find their own edge, each one alone with themselves in the solitude of the desert, even surrounded by a team. It's not a race in the traditional sense. It's a reckoning. Gentle lives tell no stories.

Rip Squad Goes from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Vegas Sign

This year, Bay Area-based team Rip Squad was specially invited to take on an extended leg of the challenge: San Francisco to Las Vegas. Six hundred miles. City streets to desert roads to mountain views. The kind of distance that changes your relationship with time, with movement, and with the people running alongside you.

From the fog of the Bay to the full-force Mojave sun. From stealing a few hours of sleep in the RV to roadside showers in the middle of nowhere. In their first-ever attempt at the 600-mile route, Rip Squad crossed the finish line in 76 hours and 14 minutes. They held the whole thing together with the discipline, the humor, and the stubborn forward momentum that defines what TSP is really about.

The Essentials That Got Them There

To keep moving for 600 miles, you need more than endurance. You need gear and a crew that never quits. On the run side, the Brooks x Nomadix Ghost Trail shoe and towels covered the basics: performance across pavement and gravel, and towels that earned their keep at every pit stop and post-run cooldown. The Ice Bandanas and Bandana Towels handled the desert heat (and sweat).

Off the road, the Graphene Puffer Blanket made the difference when it came to recovery and a good night's nap. The Changing Poncho handled all the mid-desert gear swaps and gas station showers. And the Easy Chairs for the breaks when the crew could take a moment to soak it all in. Out there, you find out pretty quickly what's worth bringing and what isn't.