Why We Compete

Run hard enough or long enough and a thought always creeps into that cranium no matter how hard you try to ward it off: Why am I doing this?

It may be while heaving on the sidelines of a highly competitive 10k, midpoint in a triathlon or just after passing a painful Mile 16 in a marathon, wondering how youíll summon the strength for 10 more like it.

The Washington Post just launched a yearlong series of sports stories called “Why We Compete.” It’s aimed at helping us understand why people undergo a sport-related challenge, especially one where the costs are great. And it begins with ultramarathoners.

As the series introduction explains: “Sports historians, psychologists, sociologists and anthropologists generally agreed on eight fundamental reasons that continue to entice us into competition: Because it thrills us. Because we’re curious about our abilities. Because competition yields a social identity. Because, sometimes, it also yields acclaim. We compete, experts said, because doing so is essential to our community. Because it’s part of a tradition. Because competition can elicit opportunities that otherwise would remain unattainable. And money. We compete for money.”

The series, though, opens with a piece about the 100-mile Barkley Marathon deep in Tennessee forest, which doesn’t offer prize money—not even a belt buckle if you make it. Competitors have 60 hours to do five 20-mile loops with Everest-like elevations and fallen trees and raging waters as course obstacles. Oh, and the event organizer unleashes rattlesnakes just to jazz things up. More than half of each year’s field quits after the first loop; only six men have made the finish cutoff since the race began in the 1970s.

In a pre-series online chat, reporter Eli Saslow wrote: “That race—and the people who run it—captivated me more than just about anything else I’ve covered for The Post. As a casual runner myself, I found it fascinating to watch people push themselves like that. It’s half crazy, half admirable.”

Later in the conversation, someone suggested a prime reason we compete in endurance sports is because of our nation’s affluence. Saslow responded: “I think because our lives can be so comfortable, we do look for ways to push and test ourselves. This competition might strike folks as even more ridiculous in a place where people couldn’t afford this much extraneous energy.”