Could you eat just tinned beans for 40 days? Beau Miles did, then he ran an ultramarathon; propelled by nothing but sheer curiosity (and shitload of beans, of course).

 

We’re big Beau Miles fans at We Are Explorers. The bloke walked 90km to work just to show that adventure is everywhere, and recently he’s run a marathon along an overgrown and disused train line and run a mile every hour while ticking off a huge hitlist of odd jobs. His Youtube page is a proper treasure trove of DIY goodness, creative microadventure and some pretty choice storytelling.

But The Human Bean is different. Inspired by a line in a John Steinbeck novel (sound familiar?), the challenge is to eat his body weight in beans over 40 days. In Tortilla Flat the poverty-stricken children eat beans directly off the floor, a line that somehow compelled Beau to see how he’d survive on ‘just beans’.

While he doesn’t eat them off the floor, he does eat all 191 cans cold, straight from the tin with an almost reckless glee.

How does eating nothing but beans for over a month affect his performance in a 50km running race? You’ll have to watch to find out, but let’s just say he has a ‘second wind’.