Ultrarunning. An absurd sport.

Beautiful trail in Bear Mountain area

I don't consider myself an ultrarunner. In fact, I only recently started to tell people that I am a "runner". Still though, I have run some ultra races and plan to do more. More importantly I feel attached to the sport and the community. So, I felt the urge to comment on this Slate article. 

The piece is about Scott Jurek. The title is benign enough: "What Are Extreme Runners Thinking?". But the following line tells you how the rest is going to go: "The addicts, obsessives, pain seekers, and euphoria nuts who choose to race 100 miles." Really? 

The author begins with a description of Jurek's suffering during races and goes right into this: "Distance running has a long history of attracting addicts, obsessive personalities, the hopelessly selfish, those who endured tough childhoods, or any combination thereof." She uses Jurek's background as an example. The narrative peaks shortly thereafter: "You might think that such an absurd sport attracts only absurd people." She turns slightly positive later, but the overall message I got was that if you run ultras, there has to be something wrong with you.

Let's start with Scott Jurek. He happens to be an elite athlete. One of the best, in fact. And like every world-class athlete in any sport, he will push himself harder than anyone else. It doesn't mean every ultrarunner is willing to experience same level of discomfort.

As for ultrarunning being an "absurd" sport, which according to Merriam-Webster means "having no rational or orderly relationship to human life". In a world fortunate enough to enjoy pastimes like baseball, basketball, football and soccer, I find it hard to believe that running is the one that doesn't have a relationship to human life. I mean there's golf for cryin' out loud! Our ancestors ran. People outside the modern world still run quite a bit.

I think (I hope!) the "ultrarunners are crazy" chatter is just a phase. The marathon became popular, because some guy named Pietri almost died while finishing the 1908 Olympic race. People thought it was lethal. Later we learned that you are supposed to eat and drink on your way and now finisher numbers are in the millions. Women were not allowed to run the distance, now there are exclusive races! 

Remember that there is nothing magical about the marathon distance. The distance between Marathon and Athens was 25 miles. That is why a marathon is as long as it is (we run about a mile longer, because someone wanted to watch the start, but don't get me started on that!). Once you start running, you can progress to the marathon distance and going further is just the next step.

One final note. In 5 days, 20000 people are going to run a 55-mile race in South Africa. I don't think they all had family problems. And there is nothing absurd about them.