Why?

This is almost without exception what I get asked when people discover that my fetish involves runing a long way. And, judging from fellow fifth-columnists in the ultra world, I'm not alone. It's a good question: why run ultras?

The easiest approach is to refer to the cliché that "for those who have to ask the question, no answer will suffice". And that's fair to a point but also a bit pretentious. There seem to be two types of people who ask why: positive people who are genuinely curious or at least interested, and negative people who mock or otherwise belittle the wisdom of this whole affair. The latter tend to have a bunch of their own issues to deal with, somewhat like binge-drinkers mocking a non-drinker for sticking out from the crowd and making them look bad.

I've tried to give this question some thought. I can only base my thoughts on my own experiences but I suspect that they will resonate with other ultra runners. What follows is a list in reverse order of priority, starting with the stuff that is least important but still important to a degree.

(Everyone has there own personal reasons and I can only give my own here. An even longer list of rationales is given at Jonathan Savage's wiki resource fellrnr.com. I'm extremely grateful for all of the time and energy he has devoted to what is an amazing wiki for runners of all abilities. I've spent many hours reading his reviews and advice.)

6. Distance is Arbitrary

When it comes to running, marathons have become a litmus test of sorts for endurance. I've run a couple but, in truth, I'm bored of them. Sure, there are lots of trail marathons out there that are much more fun. But most marathons nowadays are huge city affairs with awful music, corporate sponsorship, the horrible slap-slap of feet on concrete, human traffic jams caused by optimistic slow runners at the front clogging up the course, unpleasantly sharp elbows, no authentic spirit, no solidarity. We're all different but I feel that this urban experience sort of misses the point of running in the first place. I am also aware that a lot of decent trail and ultra runners only got there by transitioning through the birth canal of city marathons. I am one of them. I remember the sense of pride over finishing my first (horribly slow) marathon in London and don't want to take that away from anyone else who has run marathons, no matter how fast or not-so-fast.

Marathon is a town in Greece. The distance from Marathon to Athens is somewhere around 40km depending on who you ask. Yet the official distance for over a century now is a very specific 42.195km. To be precise, this is a metric translation of 26 miles and 385 yards. It has been that way for over a century because the 1908 London Olympics needed it to start at Windsor Castle and feature a victory lap next to the Royal Box of the White City Stadium. Nobody can deny that the distance as it stands today is utterly arbitrary. But ultra is generally accepted as being anything over that number. So why not run 50km? It's a much neater, rounder number for people who like things to be in decimals. 100km is neater still. And 100 miles is a sort of paradox: 100 is a neat number but, being again based on inches, feet and yards, it's also arbitrary. The point is that everything is arbitrary. And what one considers difficult, another considers less so. And, with at least some mileage in my legs, the 100 miler belt buckle is, for me at the moment, what I consider difficult. It's also a sort of slap-your-gear-on-the-table gold standard of being crazy about your running.

5. Physical Fitness

Yes, running a lot has given me a very powerful heart and pair of lungs as well as really strong legs that look good. But although keeping fit and active is important and so on, this is genuinely not a huge motivator for me. I think perhaps it's just too abstract for me to think about maintaining good health so I can run around with my great-grandchildren some point in the future.

4. A Fantastic Leveler

I'm not that old but, when I was born, women weren't allowed to compete in Olympic marathons. Joan Benoit Samuelson, the winning woman when women were allowed for the first time at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, won in 2:24:52... which is really fast! This makes me both laugh and cry at the ridiculousness of dividing people up according to the stuff between their legs. Raise the bar to longer distances and the physiological difference between "woman" and "man" is virtually irrelevant when you're running ultras. Obviously a runner will find it hard to get to the finish line if they haven't put in the miles and trained adequately. But, during an ultra, mental toughness utterly transcends physical ability. And the respect we all show each other leaps beyond the arguably arbitrary boundaries of gender.

This equally applies when it comes to chronological age. There are some seriously old people out there putting in some spectacular performances in ultra. I only run these things to complete rather than compete, but if I ever fancied trying to win a race I'd clearly have a better chance of success at my age than in most other fields.

And finally. Your background, what you look like, what you work with, your wealth... they all mean absolutely nothing when you're in suffering and in pain, perhaps on your own and in some bleak and remote corner of the world. You are boiled down to two things: your physical fitness and your strength of mind.

3. Kudos

Yes, I feel proud and it gives me a kick when jaws drop. And, much like climbing K2 or winning an Olympic gold is a feat of eternity, nobody can take it away from me.

Most people seem to think that it is beyond their own ability. Sure, some people are beyond redemption but, for the most part, they are wrong in thinking so. In a way, this observation is connected to point 1 below, which is summed up by the ethos of Who Dares Wins.

2. Mental Health

I haven't always been super-cheerful, my mother died an alcoholic, and it isn't fun enduring the long dark hours of what feels like the eternity of Swedish winter. If I run, I have more energy and become more productive. If I don't run, then I risk going all Hemingway on myself. So I don't really have a choice. Running makes me better in the head.

1. Difficulty

I have a privileged life in Sweden as a married family man with two kids. But, grateful as I am, I am also bored by how ostensibly easy things are. Without intending to romanticize utter poverty, I have lived and worked in developing countries with trickier infrastructures and felt a bit more at home and honest about life while I was there. So perhaps the discomfort of running a very long way serves as an emulation of that experience.

When I was younger and entering adulthood in the UK, I was selected for officer training in the military, as well as other exotic foreign careers. But I turned things down out of principle: the country was busy bombing Iraq in the wake of September 11th and I didn't feel too comfortable about being a part of the whole thing. But my respect for the difficulty of certain aspects of military service remained. Parking the ethics of professional killing to one side, I continue to respect the achievement of those special forces soldiers I have so far encountered. Most have been Brits and their berets, like the belt buckles of the 100 milers, have denoted their own accomplishments: green for the Commandos, sandy beige for the SAS and so on. Every country has their own elites. What has struck me about almost all of these beret-wearers is how far from the stereotype they have been in real life. No machismo, bragging, arm-wrestling, being a loudmouthed arsehole in a pub. These are the hallmarks of the insecure. Instead, they've tended to be quiet, intelligent, thoughtful and, as a sidenote, supremely fit individuals. They didn't have anything to prove and I liked that.

When I hit my 30s, it finally dawned on me that I wouldn't be able to test myself through SF selection. Apart from still being against such a career out of principle, I was also now too old to join. So I went looking for something different. I wanted to throw myself at something where my success or failure was an unknown commodity. And I suspect that I have found it in ultras. The SAS could probably do it sleepwalking, but I know from experience that running in mountainous terrain for 100km and beyond is something that very few regular soldiers are capable of. This ability to keep on going, to endure pain and suffering, to put one foot in front of the other until the end, is a common denominator. So I've found a (civilian) hard thing to do that partly matches the arduous and uncertain nature of SF selection. And, when someone who has done both of these shakes your hand and goes "fair enough", then it's a good indicator that you're capable of overcoming difficult things.*

Unlike little else in life, this sort of running gives me a sense of inner pride. But let's be clear about things here. This is a sport for individuals and the point I have been trying to make is that ultra is right now the thing that is difficult for me. Let's reconsider my first point that distance is arbitrary. Therefore, this individual benchmark of difficulty is neither better nor worse than the accomplishment of, say, the person who has survived decades of obesity, heavy drinking or other crap lifestyle choices, experienced a sort of near-death enlightenment and then managed to run ten minutes without a break. That person deserves much more respect than I do.

What we both have in common is that what we are doing is really hard.

*Although I argued that ultra running can be comparable to SF selection as an effective separator of wheat and chaff, I make no claim regarding the level of danger involved in this folly. My military experience is limited to two years in the reserves. I have no experience of being in conflict or of seeing people I care about seriously suffer in a bad way, and don't attempt to compare ultra running with warfare. That would be asinine. I don't want to die or seriously mess myself up doing that sort of stuff. I am very happy being alive.