What Endurance Sports Teach Us About Being Human

Even if you are not a runner, Entrekin's historic performance at the Cocodona 250 elicits strong emotions.

Our everyday lives are set up so that we avoid discomfort, but at what cost?

Rachel Entrekin made history this week. Completing the Cocodona 250 mile foot race in an astounding 56 hours. She not only won the race outright, but also set a new overall course record – running the route faster than any person in the race’s history.

Sleeping a collective 19 minutes over the course of three days and two nights, Rachel ground her way through extreme temperatures, mountain passes, pain, and self-doubt.

Watching the video of her crossing the finish is emotionally evocative. As she nears the finish line, she breaks away from her pace crew into a sprint, pumping one arm with pride, covering her sobs with the other.

Though she does this with ease, it is obvious that this was far from easy. She wears the cumulative pain, weariness, and fatigue from the past 500,000 steps alongside joy and elation.

She is the living embodiment of grit and vitality.

You do not need to be a runner (or even begin to fathom why someone would willingly attempt a 250 mile foot race) to feel big emotions stir while watching this historic moment.

Why?

There’s Something to Be Gained by Welcoming Discomfort

Our everyday lives are set up to minimize discomfort.

We order coffee on our phone to avoid feeling bored for three minutes in line. We shop online to avoid the stress of going to the store. We cancel plans at the last minute to avoid the awkwardness of saying no in the first place.

And yet, some of the most meaningful aspects of the human experience requires a willingness to feel uncomfortable.

Pursuing goals requires tolerating uncertainty and the risk of failure. Closeness requires emotional vulnerability. Healing requires feeling.

We cannot decide which emotions we get to experience in this lifetime. If we close ourselves off to discomfort, that may work well for a little bit – and come at a cost in other ways. When avoidance becomes the only tool in the toolbox for managing distress, our world shrinks down.

If we automatically default to avoidance, we drift further and further away from what truly matters.

There is no need to seek out discomfort solely for the sake of discomfort. If I cut off my arm, for example, there would be no life lesson to be learned.

But when we seek out discomfort connected to values? That's where we find purpose and meaning.

Entrekin’s Cocodona performance reminds us that there are no shortcuts into meaningful experiences. Willingness to step into discomfort means that we are also willing to experience growth and transformation.

The path towards change can be winding, painful, and uncertain, and yet – without welcoming discomfort, how else can we move anywhere new?

If She Can Do That, What Can I Do?

Endurance sports illuminate the bare elements of the human experience. When the body is pushed to its limits, hope, despair, fatigue, anguish, joy, and many other emotions bubble up to the surface.

It is easy to look at extremely talented athletes like Entrekin and assume she was simply born superhuman.

Yet in a short interview following the race, Entrekin admits that she struggled with very human imposter syndrome thoughts around mile 50. Despite literally winning the race for two consecutive years prior in addition to many other tremendous successes in sport, she questioned her ability to remain in the front of the pack.

She states that she countered these thoughts by merely asking, “why not you?”

Most of us – even those who are ultrarunners, such as myself – will never attempt an extreme endurance event such as Cocodona.

And yet, all of us can easily relate to the very human experience of struggling through self-doubt.

Whether it’s a career transition, having a difficult conversation with a partner, or attempting a new hobby in midlife, many of us wait until we feel totally ready before taking the first step. While waiting for that day to come, we perpetually cycle through avoidance and pain, continually waiting for life to change for us.

Entrekin’s performance calls us to consider that confidence, or any emotion, is not a prerequisite for action.

The more important consideration is simply, “why not you?"

This post also appears on Psychology Today.