The Why

I guess somewhat related to my earlier post about my shift in interests, this year has gone up a level. On top of my normal running adventures, I’ve signed up for three ultras and I’m eyeing an Iron Man for 2027. Not for show, not for an ego boost, but to find the end of me and see what’s there.

The first thing that comes out of people’s mouth when I tell them is “why?”. It’s a fair question, and I’ve answered it badly more times than I care to admit. Part of the answer is the same one any endurance athlete will give you. Running is my therapy. It’s how I deal with the mess of my mental health, and how I deal with my demons by running away from them until they get bored. To borrow the meme though, the real reason underneath all of that is just that I can.

I know how that sounds written down, but I mean it pretty literally. After Manchester I felt flat for a stretch. It went terribly due to the heat, but I also missed something in the calendar to work towards, and I started filling the space with too much rubbish. Phone, snacks, the usual. The only thing that actually shifts that feeling for me is signing up to something I can’t back out of, getting a bit of sponsorship in before I have time to think, and then having no choice but to go and train for it. I’ve worked out that’s not a bug in how I’m wired, it’s the whole engine. I need the hard thing in front of me to keep the rest of me pointing in the right direction.

There’s a version of this where I dress it up as discipline or growth or whatever language the internet wants to put on it this week, but it’s simpler than that. I’m grateful to have a body that does what I ask of it on most days, and a head that drags me through the bad ones, and I don’t think gratitude means much if I don’t actually do anything with it. I want to feel the pain, the suffering, the stupid early mornings, the bit at thirty kilometres where everything hurts and nothing makes sense, all of it. Plenty of people would take this deal in a heartbeat if their body let them, and mine does, which feels like something I’d be a fool to waste.

My daughter Lucie struggles to stand up some days. She lives in a body that won’t always do what she asks of it, and she had no say in any of that. I have a say, I’ve got a working set of legs and lungs and a mind that, on balance, will see me through. Pretending I don’t have a choice in what I do with all of that would feel like an insult to her every time I sat down on the sofa instead of going out the door. So I go out the door. The ultras and the Iron Man are mostly just bigger versions of going out the door.

A healthy body isn’t something to take for granted, and it isn’t something that lasts forever no matter how stubborn you are about it. So for as long as my legs will take me where I point them, and my mind will hold its nerve through the dark patches, I’ll keep asking ridiculous things of both and seeing what they have to say about it. The ultras, the Iron Man, whatever turns up after that and looks daft on paper. It all sounds insane when I say it out loud. It feels increasingly normal in my head. I’ve stopped trying to make those two things agree.