When you go through his TikTok account, Michael Mitchell could be held up as an example of what happens when you spend too much time at high altitude.
The videos show him carrying his slim, tan figure and wholesome, golden haircut up steep trails as fast as most of us walk a sidewalk in downtown Denver. He is always bare-chested, probably wearing a nipple ring and silver glitter smeared on his chest glinting in the sun.
“RAVE TWINK!” he may yell, or “YEET,” probably punctuated with an F-bomb. When he’s done with the run — many times it’s 15 miles — he bites the Coors silver bullet he stuffed in his shorts and shotguns it.
In one video, he’s climbing a snowy peak in a purple Speedo. In another, he’s bombing down a ski run in the same Speedo. In a third, he’s wearing what looks like tighty whities, flying a gay pride flag on top of a summit. In one of his most recent, he climbed Longs Peak, the dangerous 14er in Rocky Mountain National Park, by what he thought was the common Keyhole route, only he climbed the Cables Route, a technical and much more dangerous and exposed way. This would have led to certain death for 95% of the people who climb Longs, but he admits his mistake in the video on the summit. He had a can of Coors up there, too.
But then there’s another video of him destroying the pack in this year’s Steamboat Marathon by a good 15 minutes. This, you’ve probably guessed, was his first marathon, something he followed no training plan for, at all. The day before the marathon, he slept in a tent and climbed Mount Elbert, Colorado’s tallest mountain, though because of the race, he was more conservative: He wore pants. Just think, he muses during a celebratory beer, how fast he could have run Steamboat had he not climbed a tough 14er the day before?
@mikey.mitch RAVE TWINK WINS MARATHON
♬ original sound – Mikey Mitch
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