In a moment, we’ll get to North Pole marathon runner Dr. Andrew Murray. But first, consider this Easter thought: People sometimes talk about sports and competition and fitness like they are all the same thing. They are not. If you draw a Venn diagram of these three notions, you’ll see some overlap, but they are not congruent.
Fitness comes first.
For some people, fitness is an end in itself: they just like to think of themselves as fit. Some people like the endorphins that come from working out. Some think of it like medicine, some like grace. And some people pursue fitness so they can enter the second Venn circle: they want to play sports, where fitness is a precondition. You can’t ski, or bike, or frolic in the deep water if you’re weak or quickly winded. You can’t play basketball if you can’t run up and down the court. You get fit so you can play, or play longer.
Competition is something altogether different. For some people, competition is an end in itself: they like the contact, the struggle. For some, it is the rush of victory. Or the dopamine surge of agonizing defeat. Competition also allows ranking and it seems that some people like that. It’s nice to know where you stand, so long as you’re sort of near the top. Near enough, however you define that.
The drive to compete will push competitive people to get fit, and it will drive them to improve their form, and then they will “play” sports but it isn’t like how noncompetitive people “play.” The most competitive have a special hunger that can make them excellent at what they do. And a little crazy.
When people talk about the negative consequences of competition, they are usually talking about that hunger, which looks to an outsider like joyless obsession. But another consequence of competition—and one that isn’t recognized as often as it should be—is that competitive people sometimes don’t do things because (a) they see contests in activities that aren’t inherently competitive and (b) they hate to lose. They really hate to lose. Because losing, or not placing high enough, implies inadequacy.
We all have a little of that in us.
If you’ve ever signed up for a triathlon, or thought about it, you might have checked the times of people in your age group to see where you’d likely rank. That was you being a little competitive. You didn’t expect to win, but you were interested in how close to the top or bottom you’d be, (and if there was anyone from work or high school who might be way better or worse than you). And if you didn’t sign up because you thought you’d end up too near the bottom, it was because your competitive nature blocked you from trying.
Not running in a marathon or participating in a triathlon isn’t a big deal. But if your competitive nature causes you to see rankings where they have no place, you have a problem. You won’t go back to school because you’re afraid you won’t be smart enough. You won’t start that business because you won’t make enough money. You know what you can do, then? You can watch TV.
Another thing you might not do, especially at your age, is hit the gym. You won’t go because your treadmill turns slower than the one being used by the 23-year-old next to you. Because you’re always pulling weight off the bar, or moving the pin up on the machine. Because when you sneak a look at the exercycle next to yours, the diodes looks like the guy is climbing the Himalayas and your diodes look…pathetic. You’re huffing across Nebraska.
Shut up. Stop comparing. This is good advice for anyone but especially for people who have moved out of their prime years of physical performance.
You know who else thinks you need to stop comparing yourself to other people? Dr. Andrew Murray.
You can look him up, but the thumbnail sketch of the guy is this: he’s fitter than anyone other than Dr. Andrew Murray will ever be. Murray ran from Scotland to the Sahara in 78 days.
Rounding up, that’s 3,000 miles. He’s also run across the Sahara, or at least the 151 desert miles that constitute the Marathon des Sables. He’s run the Everest Marathon, which starts at the Mount Everest Base Camp (yes, it’s mostly downhill from there, but still). This weekend, while you were discussing amusing things you have done with Peeps, he finished the North Pole Marathon, more than 26 miles over ice and snow, with the temperature around -15° F (-26° Celsius). And he placed first.
But Murray isn’t that fixated on rankings. He says he’s actually sort of a slow runner. He isn’t about the competing so much as the doing. He says “the point about getting active is just to get out and do what you can, find something you like that you’ll want to keep doing, and then just go for it.” He points out that fitness is really a leisure activity, but it has benefits: “It makes you healthy, has been shown to improve quality of life and it’s available to everybody. It’s not just for people who want to be in the Olympics—or who want to run to Morocco.”
Murray “admits that he is driven by a fear of ‘not trying’ rather than failing,” which is a way of saying that yes, finishing beats not finishing, but not finishing beats the hell out of not starting.
So here’s an idea on this day that’s consecrated to the notion of resurrection: Rise up. Start moving. Still hesitating? Read this piece by Gawker’s Hamilton Nolan, which states the case with exuberant profanity and gives you excuses that “may be legitimately employed to make ourselves feel better about our own objective fitness inferiority to someone else.”
Feel better? Good. Now rise up. Start moving. Rejoice over what you can do, and do it.
Painting by Anthony van Dyck, “Triumph of Silenus” (1599-1641) via Wikimedia Commons
