Why we put up with the pain involved in marathon training or Ironman training

Most people don’t run marathons, race triathlons, or compete in road and mountain bike races. Indeed, many people think it’s just plain crazy to do so. That’s because these folks know that participating in endurance sports involves a great deal of suffering, and it does not seem rational to them to suffer voluntarily for no obvious reward.

But there are real and substantial rewards that come from the suffering endurance sports athletes endure. At least that’s what Michael Atkinson, Ph.D., thinks. Atkinson is a sociologist at England’s Loughborough University who has devoted his career to figuring out why endurance athletes do what they do.

“I’m really fascinated with suffering,” Atkinson told me in a recent interview. “You don’t go into an Ironman thinking, ‘Tra-la-la-la-la, this is going to feel fantastic.’ You know it’s going to ache. Learning to like that ache becomes part of the process. And if you want to look at why, most of the people who become engrossed with long-distance events come from middle-class backgrounds and have middle-class work ethics along with ideas about setting goals and about learning to achieve a sense of identity—not only through the business and family things that they do but through leisure pursuits as well. So if I can set goals and train toward them and work my body toward them, that just reaffirms my identity elsewhere. I’m a person who can set goals, plan things out. I have will and determination, and that really sets me apart from the herd.”

So according to Atkinson, one of the big rewards that endurance athletes derive from the suffering we experience in training and racing is heightened self-efficacy—or the knowledge that we are capable of performing specific tasks. And if we value the tasks we are able to perform well, self-efficacy contributes to our self-esteem.

I find the relationship between toughness, or the capacity to endure discomfort, and self-esteem particularly interesting. As an endurance athlete, it seems obvious to me how proving our toughness to ourselves by enduring great discomfort in the achievement of a meaningful task can increase our self-esteem. And from an evolutionary perspective, it certainly should, since toughness helps us to survive, and the strengthening of any capacity that aids our survival should make us feel good. But what I think makes toughness so interesting in this regard is that it is almost paradoxical: being able to endure feeling bad now makes us feel good later.

I learned this lesson most powerfully when I completed my first triathlon. It was an Olympic-distance event that I simply did not train for. I all but drowned during the swim, plowed through the bike leg on a 40-pound steel mountain bike with one working gear, crashing horribly halfway through it, and was forced to walk twice during the run, which took place under steadily increasing heat. I wanted to quit so badly, but I did not. So when I crossed the finish line, I felt duly proud of myself.

But then that feeling becomes like a drug because it fades, and to bring back the intensity you have to prove your toughness to yourself all over again by crossing another finish line. Also, you must raise the bar, much as the more literal types of drug addicts are known to do. In the beginning, an Olympic-distance triathlon is enough. Then it takes an Ironman 70.3, then a full Ironman. Before you know it, only qualifying for the Hawaii Ironman World Championship will make you proud. So maybe we are a little crazy after all!