The Ultra Runner's Paradox: From "Never Again" to "Sign Me Up!"
At mile 80, your legs object, your stomach feels bad, and your mind is full of doubt and sadness. Each step takes great effort, a fight against the strong wish to drop on the trail side plus just give up. "I will not do this ever again," you state through tight teeth. "This is crazy. What was I thinking?" The finish line, a far off image, appears impossibly distant. Yet...
Twenty-four hours later, you sit on your couch. Your legs still hurt, but a strange feeling of success covers you. You look at the race photos, recalling the good and bad parts, the friendship, the beautiful view. The pain lessens, and a warm sense of achievement replaces it. You just find yourself on UltraSignup, looking at future races also searching for your next difficult event. "Perhaps a 100k now?" you think, with a playful look in your eye.
This is the ultra runner's cycle. The hard facts of the race itself, the sheer body and mind suffering, can make you promise to never run ultras again. But the memory of that suffering leaves surprisingly fast. The appeal of the next trip replaces it. This is an odd event, showing the human ability to both endure and forget some things.
Why do we do this? Why do we put ourselves through such hard tests, only to immediately look for the next one? Perhaps it is the sense of success, the understanding that we went past what we thought we could do. Perhaps it is the friendship of the ultra group, the shared experience of pain as well as success. Or perhaps it is simply the natural wish to test our limits, to find out what we truly can do.
No matter the reason, the ultra runner's cycle of "no more" followed by "enroll me!" is familiar - it shows how addictive ultra running is, how it gets into your thoughts and spirit. It reminds us that the human spirit does amazing things, and that even when facing great discomfort, the pull of the next challenge, the next trip, is often too great to resist.
