A tweet from Dr Eli David on 26th Jan 2023:
Unpopular opinion: Running marathons is the most pointless activity known to humanity.
This was stated as opinion rather than fact, and seemed to be toying with the audience but at the time of starting this post, there have been 11.6K people indicating that it may not be such an ‘unpopular opinion’.
As a runner myself, I need to be sure I’m not simply being ‘triggered’ by a deliberately provocative tweet, so will explore the idea genuinely and non-defensively while asserting marathon running as a path of mastery. An act of optimistic defiance in the face of absurd pointlessness.
The absurdity of marathon running:
Putting the absurd and arbitrary distance of 26.2 miles aside for a moment, there are certainly some risks associated with running marathons which are not all conducive to health and well-being. It’s not for everyone and many people try to run marathons without sufficient conditioning and will suffer the consequences. I’ve had bouts of Achilles tendinosis from years of running but despite the injuries along the way, I’m extremely grateful to my younger self for getting into good enough shape to be able to take on marathons and other sports because it has all brought me to the excellent health I enjoy now that I’m in my 50s. The pain of any injuries is far outweighed by the confidence, satisfaction, and eudaimonia I feel from the process of gaining those scars.
Nihilism:
The view that marathon running is the most pointless of human endeavours is a somewhat nihilistic opinion - this thinking can be applied to anything. What’s the point of yoga? What’s the point of playing football? What’s the point of creating art? What’s the point of writing things on Twitter? What’s the point of this blog post?
What’s the point of existing?
Sisyphus:
In an effort to test whether my poor drawing skills would improve through consistent practice, I once made a sketch of Sisyphus pushing his boulder around every day for three months - what on earth was the point of that?
The Sisyphus of Greek mythology had to endure suffering far longer than my 3 months, it was for eternity, just as the sun would rise only to fall in the evening, Sisyphus’ punishment for betraying the gods was to push a boulder up a hill, only for it to roll down to the bottom in the evening, a futile task if ever there was one.
Actually, my three month exercise of Sisyphus sketching wasn’t entirely pointless. The drawings lacked any serious claim to artistry but the process proved to me that I could stick to a commitment and improve through repetition, and it has also endowed me with a little opening story to talk about nihilism and absurdism in this blog post.
The question, what’s the point of existing?, was addressed in Albert Camus’ 1942 essay, ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’. Camus posits that suicide is the only rational act in an absurd world devoid of any inherent meaning such as ours. We crave meaning and purpose, but the universe is reluctant to fulfil our hunger. However, hope springs eternal, and Camus eventually comes around to the idea that rebellion in the face of absurdity, persisting with the trials of life despite its inherent pointlessness is our way of staring absurdity in the face and laughing at it all. One must imagine Sisyphus happy, in spite of his senseless daily burden. The universe is absurd, and running marathons is absurd, but running marathons, just for the sake of it, just because we can, is the triumph of hope over nihilistic despair.
The universe doesn’t care about you, it has given you an existence without meaning, but hope is the ultimate revolt, our very existence and the courage to run pointless marathons, or do the ironing, against the threat of the looming abyss, is pure defiance.
But maybe there is a point to running:
Eudaimonia:
Our modern world optimises for comfort. We can loaf around all day if we wish, never leaving the womb of our cosy homes where we are umbilically connected to the Internet activating a few HTTP Requests to source everything we can ever imagine we might need. For the bold and the curious, indulging in deliberate suffering, such as training for a marathon, brings much-needed contrast to our otherwise coddled existence. Marathon running is ‘Type 2 Fun’, gruelling at the time but retrospectively brings a feeling of Eudaimonia, that sense of fulfilled flourishing which we cannot gain from the more hedonistic ‘Type 1 Fun’ where joy is instantaneous and in the moment.
”The best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times… the best moments usually occur if a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.”
- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Our life stories:
Our lives are stories, the richer our experiences, the deeper our stories. We don’t remember the countless mundane moments pounding the road when training for a marathon, what we remember are the peak experiences. The probability of having a peak experience is increased by doing something hard - “We choose to go to the moon… and other things”, as J.F. Kennedy pronounced in his 1962 speech, “not because they are easy, but because they are hard”.
The story of the marathon runner is hard won, there are no shortcuts, it’s a story of guts, discipline, commitment, inner conflict and triumph. The marathon sets the scene for us to become the hero of our own story.
Persistence hunting:
The thing is, sorry to use a cliche, but we are born to run. I recall Will Self, the erudite author and professional curmudgeon once uttering something along the lines of “Bipedalism is the primary means of human locomotion” in defence of his decision to walk or cycle to a public lecture. We are biomechanically suited to running over long distances. In pre-historical times we would have used Persistence Hunting, chasing down prey over long distances until they would succumb to injury or exhaustion. Over long enough distances, humans, unburdened by the modern-day comforts, can outrun horses - useful if you need to eat them, and fun if you are one of the many endurance runners to have triumphed over their equine competitors in ‘Man vs Horse’ races staged around the world.
That’s the point of running, that’s its evolutionary function. I wonder what proportion of modern humans can even run to their local grocery store?
Moving mindfulness meditation:
Ben Martynoga, of the National Institute for Medical Research, refers to the meditative effects of running and its positive effect on mental health - "I like to think of running as moving mindfulness meditation"
Speaking from personal experience, running is hypnotic, it puts me in an altered state of mind. I automatically muse over ideas, have conversations with my inner voice, have spontaneous insights (that I will annoyingly forget by the time I get home), and even running at pace I feel relaxed in both mind and body. It’s a very pleasant experience. John Ratey, psychiatrist and author of ‘Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain’ talks about the release of the protein brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), which is a catalyst for neurogenesis, the emergence of new brain cells. Running tells the body you are still relevant, you are still active, and you may be entering new environments where an active and alert brain is critical to your survival.
Trade-offs:
Every decision, every moment of life is a trade-off, it’s a choice we make with our apparent free will. A slothful life of junk TV and junk food is freely chosen, as is the life of a marathon runner or any similar path. The freedom to choose is our gift, and our choices create the stories threads that we weave into our own personal meaning.
Embracing absurdity:
Choosing a path of mastery in marathon running, parkour, software engineering, piano playing, or becoming a medical doctor are equally absurd pursuits, but to take the view they are pointless is to nihilistically justify suicide as the only rational path. Instead, we can embrace the absurd nature of our human existence, laugh in the face of absurdity and use our gift of freedom to create meaning for ourselves by indulging in whatever pursuit captures our interest to the best of our abilities.
Mastery:
The object of any pursuit of Mastery will seem pointless to some people while meaning the world to those pursuing it. The path of Mastery is what brings meaning to our absurd freedom. Mastery of one’s physicality and mastery of the self are paths that give meaning to those who chose them. And that’s the point of running marathons - it’s an expression of human potential, and the ultimate act of defiance against existential absurdity.
Never let anyone get away with calling your pursuit of mastery, in your field of choice, pointless. The path of mastery is paved with many acts of defiance.
Agree. https://tempo.substack.com/p/groove