Boulder’s Ryan Van Duzer (imagine the most annoyingly active person you know multiplied by 100) recently told 5280 his extensive worldwide travels have inspired him to prove to others how much better their lives could be if they’d get off the couch and head outdoors on more adventures. Van Duzer has ridden his bike from Canada to Mexico and once crossed the continental U.S. from east to west on a cruiser donated by Fort Collins’ New Belgium Brewing Company. But his latest feat, a survival-based reality-TV show called Out of the Wild that debuts Thursday on the Discovery Channel, has been almost too much for him to handle.

“I had no idea what I was getting into,” he tells Boulder’s Daily Camera (video promo of the show included). “It was, no questions asked, the most difficult mental and physical challenge of my life.” Van Duzer has long kept his fans informed of his exploits via his website, ryanvanduzer.com, and for those of us with an instinctual repulsion to this genre of television, he promises the show’s message isn’t about infighting or secret alliances: “This series will portray the best of humanity, as opposed to most junky reality shows.”