Manitou Springs Runner Completes 500 Miles to Moab in 11 Days

Somewhere near Olathe, Colorado, with more than 240 miles behind him and 260 still to go, Dante Liberato sat down in the desert and stopped. "I felt absolutely miserable in that moment," he said later. "I was realizing how much further I had to go, and how much longer it was going to take."

He stood up and kept running.

Liberato, 27, a Manitou Springs gym owner and mixed-martial arts fighter, ran 500 miles over 11 days in the fall of 2025, eating LSD and psilocybin mushrooms the whole way. The endeavor is featured in a documentary titled "Dante," by Colorado Springs-based Suffer Films. A film crew followed Liberato's every step, and along the way he ingested LSD and psilocybin, a naturally occurring psychotropic found in certain mushrooms. He was also followed by nurses, a therapist, and fellow athletes.

Liberato left on September 22 with a small crew and a psychedelics protocol of his own: not one massive hit of LSD, but a series of small ones, 30 to 40 micrograms at a time, trickled throughout the day.

The documentary, directed by Fernando Gonzalez, is titled "Dante: 500 Miles on Psychedelics." The running route kept expanding as Liberato added dirt and removed pavement. It sat around 455 miles when Gonzalez pointed out that "500" hits harder. That meant adding another ultramarathon's worth to the route. "Fuck it," Liberato said. "I can run 500 miles."

The origins of the experiment trace back to a race above Breckenridge. Around mile 85 of the 100-mile Silverheels Trail Run, Liberato was bonking. Someone gave the retired cage fighter a dose of psychedelics, and within minutes he was having fun. "It brought me out of this hole," he said, "and by the finish I really wanted to keep running."

Whether the chemicals meaningfully improved his performance or simply altered his experience of suffering remains an open question. Both psilocybin and LSD are classified by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration as Schedule I substances, alongside the description: high potential for abuse with no medical benefits. They are illegal under federal law, including in Utah and across any federal land the route crossed. The documentary does not claim otherwise. It shows psychedelics as powerful tools, capable of insight but also of challenge, and it shows suffering not as failure but as an invitation to listen more closely.

What the film captures honestly is the full range: mood swings, physical breakdown from strains and muscle pulls, and the near-quit near Olathe at mile 240. Those watching the ultra-running space for evidence that psychedelics unlock measurable gains will not find a clean answer here. What Liberato offers instead is a data point from a single self-designed experiment conducted outside any clinical framework, on terrain that runs from the Colorado Front Range deep into canyon country.

Back in Manitou Springs, Liberato co-runs The Den Somatics, a gym near Manitou Springs focused on primal movement and somatic training. His Couchmilk program infuses app-tracked, data-based psychedelic use with training and recovery. Not one of the Couchmilk-trained fighters has lost a fight, he says.

After 11 days and 500 miles, Liberato arrived in Moab. "I kept thinking about what would be the perfect ending to my journey," he said. "Eating an ice cream sandwich was pretty close to it.