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Extreme Exercise

Since arriving in Colorado I have been extolling its outdoors exercise cult to the point of boosterism. It's time for a little balance.

This weekend Leadville had a 100 mile Run! Runners had 30 hours to complete it. I'm not sure of all the rules, but apparently they could walk or rest whenever they needed to. But they had to make intermediate cutoff points by the deadline or be disqualified.

The 100 miles had its share of climbs of course. The altitude varied between 9500 and 12000 feet. In the afternoon the runners had to contend with rain and lightning. I saw some of the survivors crawling in on Sunday morning. Some hobbled in, looking very sore.

Why is there this obsession in running, biking, etc., with enormous distances? Why not shorten the distance, increase the speed and intensity of the race, and make it more interesting by some other angle? My best efforts at amateur psychoanalysis is that these people have a drastic self-esteem problem that can only be assuaged by self-inflicted torture.

In an earlier era, say, the ascetic era of the early Christian Church, people like this had names like St. Anthony. They thrived in the desert, inflicting pain and suffering on themselves, sitting on flagpoles for years, wearing hairshirts, drinking only water, eating who knows what--probably bugs and rodents.

At the finish line the runners had to run up a steep uphill, so steep that just by looking at the Finish Line banner the bleary, confused runner would look at the sky over the highest town in the US, like a medieval sinner staring into heaven.

The announcer gave their name and hometown, and congratulated them for finishing the Race Across the Sky. Perhaps he thought the phrase was inspiring--an allusion to winged Pegasus of Greek myth, or the Ride of the Valkyries of Teutonic myth.

But wouldn't it be better to compare all this to the annual pilgrimage of Shiites to the Holy City of Qum, with them practicing self-flagellation along the way?

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