On Endurance Sports

Shortly after entering grad school I took an interest in endurance sports. It was one of those “I’ll do it if you do” things with two friends — Andy and Mike. First it was a Half Marathon Spartan Race in Killington, Vermont with Andy in September of 2024. We walked in relatively blind, with others being shocked at how little Spartan Race experience we had prior (it was his second and my first). Truthfully we picked the race because of its proximity to Boston, since he was at Harvard and I, Northeastern.

It was by no means an easy event, but we fared alright. Well enough to walk away from it thinking we could complete the Ultra Marathon version in September of 2025. We’ll come back to that.

Next was a Half-Ironman. I had called Mike one day and he told me he was doing one and suggested I do one as well. I am by no means a strong swimmer but figured “why not?” I purchased a training plan online, got a cheap bike off Facebook Marketplace, and decided to figure it out. I attempted IM 70.3 Bolton, England on 08 June and walked away with a DNF. That’s a story in-and-of-itself but I ended up completing IM 70.3 Augusta, Maine on 27 July in 7:05:38. For experienced triathletes, not an impressive time, but enough to make me say “I think I could complete a full Ironman.”

It’s around this time and Mike, Andy, and I all signed up for Ironman Arizona on 19 November. 4 months is certainly not enough time to train for a full Ironman if the goal is to get a good time. But we wanted to complete it, so again, we figured “why not?”

An Aside: If you’re keeping track of the timeline, from July to November there’s pretty much a race every two months: IM 70.3 Augusta on 27 July, Killington Spartan Race Ultra on 13 September, and IM Arizona on 16 November. To be clear, I do not recommend doing a race every two months. In hind sight, I loved each race, but my body did not have ample time to recover and I was simply hanging on for each race.

13 September and 16 November came around and both were completed with times of 14:00:39 and 15:14:07 respectively. They were each incredibly difficult yet rewarding for different reasons.

Killington I was not confident in at all. I remember the pit in my stomach as we parked before we started. I knew that it’d be difficult (Andy and I had been told that this was the hardest Spartan Race in the United States), but I’d been training for IM Arizona and was treating this as something in the middle of that block. Definitely not the best strategy. I also didn’t have a great pacing startegy going into it. I knew the overall cutoff time, but didn’t have any checkpoints along the way. I figured that either I was going to finish or they were going to pull me off the course once the cutoff time had hit. Once the race started and my body warmed up, I became more confident. I met some amazing people along the way and was able to hang with them. My nutrition was great and I loved the race, although I certainly couldn’t walk for several days after.

Ironman Arizona I was more confident going in, but since I wouldn’t classify myself as a strong swimmer, that part had me nervous. I knew that if I could get out of the water, I’d be able to hang on until the end of the race. Needless to say that the swim was difficult, but I scraped by and was able to get through. Ringing the first-timer bell and crossing that finish line was a moment I’ll never forget.

Some might say that after Ironman Arizona, I’d had enough, but you’d be wrong…

Backing up a bit, around August timeframe, I had entered the lottery and gotten into the Bare Performance Nutrition (BPN), Go 1 More, Last Man Standing, Backyard Ultramarathon in Austin, TX. A 4.2 Mile Loop every hour, on the hour, until you win, decide to stop, or collapse. The race was scheduled for 10 April, 2026 and I knew it’d be unlike anything I’d undertaken before.

Every other race format that I know of has a specified distance, but this race goes until one person is left, meaning that the distance of the event is set by the winner. And everyone else is a DNF. It’s psychologically different than any other race format because you can’t count up/down to see how much further you have to go.

Insert something about training for this and what it meant

I like to joke that the Backyard Ultra was a gateway drug because I fell in love with these ridiculously long Ultramarathons. So much so that I’ll be participating in the Coldwater Rumble 100 Miler with some friends on 16 January 2027, and the Georgian Death Race — a 74 Mile race with ~16k feet of elevation gain — on 27 March, 2027.

With all that said, I love endurance sports. Marathon, 70.3, Full Ironman, Ultramarathon, they’re all great. It’s well documented the benefits that voluntarily doing hard things has on one wholistically. They’ve taught me about discipline, failure, success, being honest with myself, how lucky I am to have the friends/support system I do, and much more. Relating it to what I’ve written in On Philosophy and Purpose, I have found that it has helped me write the stories of my life that I want to write and trust myself more. I no longer worry about the day-to-day minutiae of life or question whether I am capable of doing something, but rather whether I want to do something. Endurance sports have allowed me to meet amazing people and transform how I reason about the world.

One Last Note: If you told me in high-school what I’ve completed, I’d think you’re crazy. But that skrawny kid was able to take the steps that led here because others told him to remove the limits on himself, and I hope that others realize this too. You don’t need to participate in borderline-psychotic endurance sports, but do difficult things. It’ll change your life.