I have always been impressed by what people can achieve. You look at the human body and it seems so frail but with enough mental strength, the right training and determination a lot of amazing things can be achieved.
This year I was impressed by three accomplishments. First, it was Alex Honnold who did a free climb on El Capitan. I have been following Alex for many years and knew that his dream was to climb the 3,000 foot Freerider route without any ropes. It takes tremendous skills and composure to do such a thing. The story was widely reported on the internet, one link here from Outside magazine. Alex has been doing free climbing for many years and already was a legend in the climbing world. His ability to control fear was actually studied in an fMRI machine.
Another impressive accomplishment was Mark Beaumont who biked around the world in 79 days. This is the link with the story on the BBC website. It was a 18,000 mile trip and he averaged 240 miles per day (16 hours of riding daily and had a few days off to fly from continent to continent). He actually did go around the world before but that was an unsupported trip and took way longer. More about him here and here.
A third incredible accomplishment was Karl Kruger who raced on a paddle board for 750 miles from Port Townsend, WA to Ketchikan, AK (Race to Alaska). His story covered by a Dirtbag diaries podcast episode is very entertaining. Obviously, a lot of people thought he is crazy. There is also a video version of his race.
We, the regular people, might never accomplish anything close to these three guys, but I think we should push our limits. Most of the time our limits are just imaginary.