AUBURN – He started hallucinating around hour 36 when asphalt began moving in ways asphalt just isn’t supposed to.

So his friend got ahead of him, and he kept his eyes on his friend’s sneakers.

For another 10 hours.

And after Mike Brooks finished last week’s Kiehl’s Badwater Ultramarathon – a grueling invitation-only race through Death Valley – he joined a 24-hour trek up and down Mt. Whitney, the highest point in the continental U.S.

To be fair, there was a four-hour nap in between.

Auburn’s marathon man came home Sunday. He has unpacked, mowed the lawn, gone to yoga class. But far from unwinding, he’s already bought a plane ticket to his next big event: a 72-hour race over New Year’s.

To hear Brooks describe the 135-mile race, it wasn’t bad, aside from six hours of diarrhea, a bit of vomiting and monster heel blisters.

“The guys I had were the dream team,” said Brooks, 58. Five friends coached him through the lows and ferried an endless supply of water, ice and food.

Sometimes they got close to him in an SUV and blasted country music. There was lots of teasing, and after mile 17 one of them was always walking or running with him. Along the way, he ate hamburgers, chips, beef jerky and peanuts.

Brooks finished 39th in the field of runners in under 48 hours, netting him a prized belt buckle. Thirteen people didn’t finish and two finished too late.

One runner was doing better than him, but only had two crew people. They both fell asleep. Without them bringing him food and water he had to drop out.

Another runner only brought paper cups for water – an impractical burden under the 1-ounce-a-minute desert hydration tip. Trying to run with an open cup and having to refill every few minutes was impossible. There were other problems, too.

“He was going up to different crews and asking for water. He couldn’t speak English,” Brooks said.

He dropped out.

When he finished the race, Brooks said he cracked open a beer and called Camp Sunshine in Maine to tell them the news.

The retired firefighter used the ultramarathon as a fund-raiser for the Sebago Lake charity. His goal is to raise $25,000. He’s at $17,000 and thinks he can do it.

Brooks hopes to give talks about his experience and continue raising money.

In hindsight, he called the mountain trek he made after the race “a big mistake.” They started at night, not realizing how dangerous the climb was until dawn. Fear of slipping and being airlifted out kept him focused on the walk down.

“I fell backwards a couple of times and they (his crew) caught me,” Brooks said. “As tired as I was and as worried as we were, the views were spectacular up there.”

He’ll never do Mt. Whitney again. The Kiehl’s Badwater Ultramarathon? Maybe.