On December 15, a player in Tokyo, Japan calling themselves Sakinyan turned on their Switch and started playing Ring Fit Adventure, Nintendo’s terrific exercise game hybrid from last year . For most people, a session with Ring Fit Adventure lasts somewhere from 15 minutes to an hour, depending on when you collapse into a pool of sweat. Sakinyan was not engaging in some light exercise, however, but attempting to pull off the first world record run for playing through all of Ring Fit Adventure’s surprisingly long story mode.

Though Sakinyan was playing Ring Fit Adventure on its easiest difficulty, in which the exercise intensity is set at one, it’s nonetheless a staggering feat of endurance. You might not be required to put in as many reps, and the game might not ask you to hold a position for nearly as long, but you still need to do the work. Standing in one spot for 18 hours would be a pain in the ass, let alone having to squeeze in squats, leg lifts, and everything in-between.

I tried to ask Sakinyan what they were thinking at that moment, when the adrenaline was finally wearing out, but my attempts to contact the speedrunner proved unsuccessful.

At 18 hours and 55 seconds, Sakinyan defeated the game’s final boss, walked over to their timer, and clicked stop. After dabbing their face with no doubt a completely soaked t-shirt, they performed a few stretches as the game’s credits rolled. There was no big celebration, no fist pump. Instead, Sakinyan sat on the ground and started scrolling through their phone.

Ring Fit Adventure asks if you want to stop every few minutes. This staggering feat took Sakinyan a little over 18 hours, nearly a complete day of nonstop exercise. At times, they took a moment to snack . Other times, they sipped water . There was even time for a bathroom break, though so far as I could tell while scrubbing through the speedrun, Sakinyan only headed to the bathroom once during the marathon. And because Ring Fit Adventure can’t take a hint, they’re also forced to tell the game they don’t want to take a break over and over.

When England decided to play the entire game in a single go, they took a day off work, and stocked up on water, alongside energy boosters like protein bars. The thing about exercising for long periods of time is how much sheer management is required. You need to keep feeding your body with additional nutrition, or else the whole thing will eventually collapse.

“I've always wanted to speedrun a RPG/JRPG of some sort and then I think I joked with somebody about speed running [_Ring Fit_] and it kinda stuck with me,” said Adam “Ventifer” England, who holds the second fastest world record run. “Then I kinda just gave it a shot.”

And while I wasn’t able to contact Sakinyan, the person who submitted the first world record for playing through the entirety of Ring Fit Adventure in one go and the reigning record holder, I was able to speak to others in the community about Nintendo’s exercising curiosity.

It’s what makes the slowly growing world of Ring Fit Adventure speedrunning so fascinating. In its early days, it’s not one defined by glitching through in the world in weird ways because no one’s discovered anything like that yet. The only “shortcuts” are to scroll the menus faster—a staple of speedrunning JRPGs—and to manage your stamina. A workout that might be more effective at taking out a group of enemies might be more personally draining, forcing you to take a costly break while your energy returns. It’s a very different way to play.

Most of us play games in chunks at a time, a few hours at most. Though the term “speedrun” suggests one is going fast, lots of games take a long time to speedrun , requiring dozens of hours of careful and deliberate play. Speedrunning is a test of skill and endurance, and while tapping buttons and analog sticks is physically draining in its own right, it’s hardly on the same level as, say, having to perform a plank over and over again .

“I remember making breakfast that morning wondering how my day will be,” they said. “I got as prepared as I thought I could be and started.”

Despite nerves on the big day, the run itself was mostly uneventful, except for a moment when England’s Joy-Cons ran out of battery, forcing him to use another pair. But when England synced them, the Switch announced it also needed to update the Joy-Cons:

“I did get a break out of it so I can't complain too much, though,” they said.

During the run itself, England hit the bathroom “five or six times,” and tried to sneak in water, vitamin water, and protein shakes in-between levels. One problem: they didn’t drink enough water before starting the run, and eventually drinking water during the run wasn’t enough. It made them tired. These are not the typical considerations required for speedrunning!

Another problem with lengthy bouts of exercise is that it can exacerbate existing physical issues. For England, it’s arthritis in their right foot. That’s not the kind of foot you want to exert 19 hours of constant pressure on. Weirdly, their right foot felt fine when the run was eventually over, but their left foot hurt like hell, combined with an overall bodily soreness.

The thing about Ring Fit Adventure speedrunning at the moment is that people are still figuring out what to run. The rules are fluid, driven by the community itself, and where people want to compete with one another; it’s not nearly as fun to earn records in a category by yourself. There are only, in total, three record submissions for playing the entire game, while most of the competition is happening between players who are speedrunning individual worlds.

“As a speedrunning game Ring Fit Adventure is still in its wild west phase,” said Liam “LiamGiiV” Gallagher, the most prominent player in the individual world category, currently holding records for 10 of the game’s 23 worlds. (13 don’t even have a submission yet!)