The sporty idea of Vitus Zeller -- a German who began the “freeathlon” by testing it out on a 10-day adventure he called “Tour de Satoshi” -- included a few of his closest allies as they raced from Switzerland's “Crypto Valley” in Zug to another heart of cryptocurrency startup culture in Munich, Germany.

The group of Bitcoin champions completed the 221-mile adventure by accepting and using bitcoin donations. They dubbed themselves “Team Satoshi” and biked, ran, and swam in the name of bringing positive awareness to Bitcoin.

Mr. Zeller said: “In mainstream perception, bitcoin is mostly the money of the dark web [for buying drugs], an energy over-consuming technology or a purely speculative asset.” This inspired him to promote the positive side of BTC, such as financial privacy, freedom of information, and other such parallels. “Bitcoin needs all kinds of voices that make people get curious about it,” he said.

How did he plan on getting people curious? First off, he decided to link BTC to sports. Zeller continued this train of thought by saying: “Sports is a deeply emotional topic for humans. For thousands of years, sportsmen have been admired. Emperors in ancient times, as well as rulers in modern times, have been using sports for political reasons.”.

Test of Trials

This Satoshi Freeathlon wasn’t an easy task. Getting the team in “fighting fit” condition took considerable time -- both for preparing their minds and their bodies.

“We have now together many hundreds of hours of intense training for this event. I, for example, ran about each week a half marathon,” Zeller said. For reference, a half marathon is 21 kilometers. Each week!

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“The preparation meant truly a lot of going above and beyond my own personal boundaries,” he added.

Once the training was complete, the team embarked. Zeller, as well as Moritz Biersack and Thomas Bette championed through for all four days.

The rest of Team Satoshi -- bitcoin podcast host Anita Posch, LocalBitcoins founder Jeremias Kangas, and Veronika Kuett -- elected to try only one or two days of the event.

The team cycled 118 miles from Friedrichshafen to Starnberg, cities in Germany. They also crossed a lake which they dubbed “monster lake” for how challenging it was to swim across.

With the Freeathlon done, Zeller said he encourages anyone in the world to start their own Team Satoshi event. “[Anyone] can create [sports] challenges on their own,” he said, by updating the wiki website with the event. “Team Satoshi members can even try to make this a profession all over the world, if they can find sponsors or people out of the ecosystem that supports them.”

I for one have been positively impacted. I also embarked on a similar journey where I traveled around the world -- 20 countries over 12 months -- all on 1 Bitcoin. I wrote a book about it: Stolen Wallets And Where to Buy Them.