Go ahead. Pick the greatest individual athletic accomplishment you can think of and I'll top it. And you won't even argue. Not for a second.
Unless, of course, you know somebody who's run a full Ironman triathlon for 18 consecutive days in 18 different states with the goal of doing 50 such triathlons in 50 states in 50 days.
That's OK. My jaw dropped, too. To the floor.
Then I drove out to Collegedale on Tuesday evening to meet James Lawrence, the self-proclaimed "Iron Cowboy" who arrived in our town at 5 a.m. Tuesday, swam 2.4 miles in the Tennessee River beginning around 9 a.m., rode his bike in 97-degree heat for 112 miles through the afternoon and early evening, then finished with a 26.2-mile run sometime in the wee small hours of this morning.
"We hope to be on our way to Jackson (Miss.) by 2 a.m.," Lawrence said at 8:26 p.m., just before he was to begin his run marathon. "That's the hope anyway."
The Utah resident mostly hopes he is doing all this - swimming a total of 120 miles, biking 5,600 miles and running 1,310 miles in 50 days - to raise awareness for childhood obesity. The 39-year-old father of five's "50-50-50 Challenge" already has garnered more than $20,000 in donations for the Jamie Oliver Food Foundation, the California-based nonprofit that the celebrity chef founded to educate schools, youth groups, businesses and communities about the desperate need for a healthier diet in this country.
"It seems everywhere you go, kids are sedentary," Sunny Lawrence noted as she sat in a Southern Adventist University parking lot tending to the couple's four daughters and one son, ages 5 to 12.
"With my generation, everybody was playing outside, getting exercise. When we heard our older daughters talking about classmates bringing a cola and potato chips for lunch, we thought we needed to do something."
Lawrence has been doing Ironmans most of his adult life. He already holds the Guinness World Record for completing 30 in one year (2012). It was during the 27th of those Ironmans that he came to Sunny with the 50-50-50 Challenge idea.
"We were staying with friends in Arizona in November of 2012," she said. "I about throttled him. I told him we weren't going to talk about this until February. He tried to talk in January. I said, 'It's not February yet.' He wanted to do it in 2014, but I didn't think his body would be ready for it. So we pushed it back a year."
It made sense, given that it took almost two years to work out the logistics. And when James decided on Hawaii for the first day, then Alaska for the second, Sunny made sure there would be 10 days of relative fun and sun on the islands before the grind began.
"I wasn't going to give that up," she said.
On the web
Iron Cowboy's blog: www.ironcowboy.co/blog/
What the 15-person traveling party (kids included) has missed most since then is one word: sleep.
"We're all dealing with sleep deprivation," she said. "The first few days none of the adults got more than two or three hours max. It's moved up to four or five now. But it's still tough."
It's proving so tough that Lawrence fell asleep on his bicycle Tuesday afternoon, injuring his left forearm, wrist, hip and back upon crashing to the pavement.
"Never happened to me before," he said. "But I've never tried anything like this before."
"Anyone else would have quit," said Hamilton County Sheriff's Lt. Robert Starnes, whose patrol car followed Lawrence throughout his biking. "But not James. He was like a cheetah. The closer he came to the finish, the faster he got."
Yet however quickly or slowly they reach the capital of Mississippi before today's 9 a.m. EDT swim, Lawrence always leaves the driving to his team, from Sunny to Aaron Hopkinson to Casey Robles. Upon leaving Mississippi, the Iron Cowboy troupe will head to Mobile, Ala. (Thursday), Pensacola, Fla. (Friday) and Atlanta on Saturday.
After that?
"I have no idea," Sunny said. "I never think that far ahead."
Both Sunny and James think they'd love to return to the Scenic City one day, maybe for a future Ironman, though probably not the one scheduled for this fall.
"We think he'll need a year off," she said. "At least that's the plan. But what a beautiful place. It was so nice just to spend the day here taking it all in."
It's crazy, of course. The body can't possibly endure such stress for 50 days in 50 states, can it? Then again, Dean Karnazes once ran 50 marathons in 50 days in 50 states.
"But that's nothing like this," said Knoxville resident Chris Koboldt, who drove to Collegedale to join a group of 50 or more running a 5K with Lawrence at the start of his marathon. "This is insane. But it's pretty amazing, too."
Want more amazing? Lawrence suffers from hammertoe, which means, at least in his case, that one toe on each foot curls under. While he was running in Kentucky on Monday, a toenail had to be cut off to relieve pain from a blister.
Asked if such moments as the bike wreck and foot injury made her concerned for her husband's long-term health, Sunny said, "I probably should be. But he really knows his body."
Lawrence said he isn't worried that he'll give out short of his goal.
"Sometimes I think about it when I get out of bed," he said with a smile. "But then somebody pushes me in the water and off we go again."
So he keeps swimming and biking and running, continuing to list his best moment as "when I cross the finish line each day and see my kids."
And the worst moment?
"It could have been that bike crash today," he said. "But I'm fine. Besides, you only have bad moments if you have a bad attitude."
Forget the athletic accomplishment. Can anybody top that attitude? Anybody?
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.