October 11, 2023 - Embarrassed About Running Ultramarathons

I spent my day yesterday in a professional online continuing education program. As one of the presenters was introduced, it was revealed that they are a trail runner and (although the introducer didn't use the word explicitly) an ultramarathoner. The introducer mentioned that this speaker had recently completed a Grand Canyon Rim to Rim to Rim (R2R2R) run. 

The speaker/ultrarunner's response as this was being mentioned caught my eye. The speaker seemed a bit embarrassed by the mention of his R2R2R run. He did not acknowledge that part of the introduction at all. Maybe there was even a bit of an eye roll as the adventure was mentioned. What caught my eye, though, was not this reaction that gave off a hint of embarrassment. What caught my eye was that I'd seen that same reaction from other ultramarathoners before, and I have had similar reactions myself.

As I thought about this, I realized that it's not embarrassment. At least for me, it's not embarrassment.  And I suspect not for others. I'm not embarrassed by participating in really long running adventures and ultramarathons. I'm overwhelmingly proud of many of them. But I do feel a twinge of ickiness when any of that is brought up in a public manner. While I'm proud of it, its not something I'm shouting from rooftops in front of every group I encounter. I think there are two reasons for this.

First, there's recognition on my part and as I've heard from others that participating in and completing ultramarathons is something that just isn't understanding to those who haven't participated. It's not that ultramarathons are some magical special place. But that the times and distances involved are just so much larger than are encountered in ordinary life that it makes the experiences not really relevant to others and not explainable by ultramarathoners. How do you possibly explain what it feels like and where your mind goes when you spend 50 hours without sleep or rest and on little food hiking and running through mountains to someone who's only real experience missing a night's sleep is an all-night study session in college? Again, it's not that there's some magic here. It's just such a foreign idea to most people that it really cannot be explained. So, when someone mentions my participating in ultramarathoners to groups, I feels an instant separation from that group, an otherness that's not terribly comfortable.

Second, and maybe more importantly, many ultramarathoning adventures are deeply personal experiences. They're an experience with myself and myself alone. Or myself and a few crew members and pacers. Or perhaps a few fellow runners become a part of that experience. But that experience is a very personal thing, that really only exists and lives in that moment, and a thing that feels out of sorts and out of place back in the real world. In fact, a common experience among ultramarathoners is how weird it feels to return back to regular life after some of these events. It's a jarring sensation going from being almost entirely isolated from the real world while in an intense, often spartan and lacking creature comforts environment with deep focus on achieving a single, simple goal to suddenly being back around all the comforts and stresses and hecticness and byzantine social constructs of the real world. It can feel really odd and out of place when these two worlds are brought into the same space, especially when a bit suddenly and unexpectedly like during a speaking introduction.

None of this is to say that anyone should feel they have wronged an ultrarunners for mentioning something that runner has done. Or that they shouldn't do it in the future. I think, in the end, I often enjoy that it was mentioned even if the initial reaction is one that's less than favorable and may appear like embarrassment. Embarrassed? No. Something very different than embarrassed.