The Misogi Challenge: The Manitou Incline
Once a year, do one thing hard enough that failing is actually possible.
That's the whole idea behind a Misogi. It's an old Japanese purification ritual that entrepreneur Jesse Itzler turned into a personal practice: pick ONE massive challenge a year, so far outside your comfort zone that the other 364 days feel manageable by comparison. Two rules, nothing else. It has to scare you. Nobody gets hurt trying.
Most people never test that line. They pick a resolution small enough to quietly drop by February. A Misogi doesn't work like that. You commit months out. You train on purpose, not out of guilt. And on the day, you find out something about yourself that a normal Tuesday never would have shown you.
Last year, ours was the Manitou Incline.
Our group posing before we attacked the Manitou Incline.
What We Signed Up For
If you haven't heard of it, the Incline is the old cog railway bed outside Colorado Springs, and it's brutal by design. 2,744 steps. Under a mile of trail. Almost 2,000 feet of climbing packed into that mile, with sections as steep as 68% grade. That's steeper than most staircases you've ever walked, and there's no flat ground to recover on and no shade to hide in. There's also no easy way down. If you get hurt up there, someone is carrying you out.
We went as a group. Nobody trained for a 5K. We trained for stairs, hills, and legs that don't quit on step 2,000, because that's exactly what the mountain was going to ask of us.
And it asked. Every one of us has a version of the story where our legs stopped negotiating and just followed orders. That's the point of a Misogi. It's not supposed to be comfortable. It's supposed to be the thing you weren't sure you'd finish.
We finished.
The Number Nobody Asked For, But I Can't Stop Thinking About
Here's a stat worth knowing if you've never looked into the Incline: the fastest known time up it is 17 minutes and 25 seconds, set by a professional mountain runner. The fastest woman on record did it in just over 20 minutes. Those numbers aren't for the rest of us. They're for people who train at altitude for a living.
For everyone else, regulars consider anything under 40 minutes a genuinely well-earned number. Most first-timers take closer to an hour or more, and that's before the walk back down.
I finished last year in 53 minutes.
I didn't know that number would follow me around for a year, but it has. 53 minutes is a real time. It's not a beginner's pace, and it's not a stunt. It's the kind of number that tells you your legs, your lungs, and your head all showed up on the same day. But it's also a number I haven't stopped thinking about, because I know I left something on that mountain. I paced too conservatively on the first 500 steps. I let one bad stretch in the middle talk me into a slower rhythm than I needed. I know exactly where the minutes went.
So this year, the mountain isn't the scary part anymore. I already know I can survive it. The scary part is the clock.
Why Doing It Again Still Counts
You could argue that repeating a challenge isn't a real Misogi. If you already know you can finish, where's the fear? Fair question. Here's my answer: the fear just moved. Last year, the risk was physical, could my body get up that mountain at all. This year, the risk is personal, can I go back to the exact same mountain and be genuinely better than the version of me who did it last year. That's a different kind of exposed. It's one thing to fail at something brand new. It's another thing to try to beat your own record in front of the same people who watched you set it, and come up short anyway.
That's still a Misogi. The rules didn't change. It still has to scare you. Nobody still has to get hurt trying. The only thing that changed is what "scare you" means the second time around.
My goal this year is simple to say and hard to do: beat 53 minutes. I don't know by how much yet. I know it won't happen by accident, and it won't happen by doing the same training I did last year. It'll take a real pacing plan, real stair work, and probably a few training days where I hate every single step.
Choosing Your Own Misogi
Your Misogi doesn't have to be a mountain. That's actually the wrong takeaway here. The mountain is just the vehicle. What makes something a real Misogi is whether it's hard enough to scare you and honest enough that you can't keep pretending you don't see it.
For some of you, that's a workout routine you've started and quit more times than you'd like to admit, not because you can't do it, but because starting again means admitting the last ten tries didn't stick. For others, it's a career change you've been talking around for two years, the kind that means walking away from something stable for something uncertain. For some, it's simpler than that. It's moving. Leaving a city, a house, or a life that fits fine but doesn't fit you anymore. For some, it's training for a marathon, not because you love running, but because you've never finished anything that took months of unglamorous work before the day it actually mattered.
Pick the one that actually scares you, not the one that sounds impressive at a dinner party. Nobody else has to approve of your Misogi. You just have to actually do it.
What This Actually Means for You
You don't have to care about my personal split time on a mountain in Colorado. But I'd bet you have your own version of the 53-minute mark. Something you already did once, that you know you could do better. A weight you already lifted, that you know wasn't your real ceiling. A goal you hit and then quietly stopped chasing because hitting it once felt like enough.
It usually isn't enough. Not because you didn't earn it the first time, but because the first time is rarely the whole story.
If you're training with us this year and thinking about your own Misogi, don't just ask what would scare you. Ask what you already did once that you know you could do better. That's usually the more honest question, and it's usually the harder one to answer.
We're going back up that mountain. I'm chasing a number I haven't hit yet. If any part of that sounds like something you want in on, whether it's the trip, the training, or just figuring out what your own version of "beat the record" looks like, come talk to us. That conversation is free. The mountain is not.