Club Endurance

A couple of months ago, I had an interview for a job at a grocery store. The interview started off normally enough, with the store manager and an assistant manager introducing themselves. We shook hands and then got down to business, with the manager — let’s call him Mr. Manager— asking, “How’s school?” A fair question. I explained to him that, while I’d gone to school last year, I took this year off so that I could go to Australia. I was quick to add, however, that I would be returning to school this coming September. 

He stopped me there.

“Why’d you go to Australia?” he asked. Before I could answer, he added, “And if you say something stupid like surfing or skateboarding I’ll hit you.” No laughter after this. Not even a smile. Either this guy is awful at telling jokes or he was being serious. At this point, the assistant manager pointed to my resume, which sat in front of Mr. Manager, and said, “He went for a race. It says right there.” Everyone else with whom I’ve spoken regarding my trip has seemed very impressed simply by the fact that I spent over 24 hours on a plane. Mr. Manager, however, was unimpressed with both my trip and my reason for travelling all that way.

“So why’d your parents let you drop out of school so you could do something stupid like that?” he asked. If I was taken aback by his comment about hitting me, I was even more caught off guard by this question. Shocked and confused, I tried to gather myself and answer his absurd question. 

“Firstly,” I said — and might I add, not impolitely — “I didn’t drop out of school, I just took the year off and I’ll go back this coming September.” 

“What’s the difference,” he asked, cutting me off, “between dropping out and taking a year off?” I explained to him that dropping out means that you’re cutting all ties with the school, that you aren’t going back, whereas taking a year off is just like deferring for a year. 

“I’m still a student there,” I explained. “My spot is just being saved until next year.” 

At this, he kind of shook his head and laughed at me, as if to say, Whatever. You dropped out. 

“As for why my parents let me go to Australia for the race,” I continued, “they recognized what an incredible opportunity it was for me. Not only to go to Australia, but to compete at the World Championships. I mean, what if I didn’t go and then never got another chance to race at that the Worlds?” When I asked this, he looked me in the eye with a smirk etched across his face, shrugged, and matter-of-factly said, “Then I’d say that it wasn’t meant to be.” It wasn’t meant to be? Are you kidding me? If it wasn’t meant to be, I wouldn’t have qualified in the first place. If everyone lived like this, passing up huge, once in a lifetime opportunities and saying, “Well, if I never get an opportunity like that again, I guess it just wasn’t meant to be,” then the world would be a horribly boring place to live. No one would do anything fun, people would never take risks, and the word adventure would be reserved for storybooks. Leave the adventuring to the Lords of the Rings and the Peter Pans, my friend, because your adventure just isn’t meant to be. 

I didn’t respond to his comment on fate, so he continued his attack on me. He asked, “So how’d you do?” It seems like a valid question, but I could tell by the way that he asked it that he wasn’t asking out of kindness or genuine interest. Instead, he wanted to see whether or not the race was worth my time — if hadn’t done well, it was a waste of a trip. Luckily, I did a fairly good job, but even if I hadn’t — even if I’d crawled across the line in last place — I would never have considered that race to be a waste of time. Also, I felt as though Mr. Manager was really hoping that I hadn’t done well, so he could keep on badgering me, trying to convince me that going to Australia was such an awful decision. 

At this point I was getting pretty irritated by the man sitting across the table from me and his seemingly endless supply of negativity, so, rather forcefully — not trying to hide my annoyance — I told him, “I came third in my age group. So I won a bronze medal. For Canada. At the World Championships.” Immediately, Mr. Manager was on the defensive, saying, “Alright, Ben, don’t be mean to me, that’s not a good way to start off an interview.” I considered pointing out the hypocrisy of this statement, seeing as he had done nothing but attack me since the start of the interview, but instead, I said nothing. I think he was expecting an apology, and maybe I should have give him one, since I was applying for a job at his store, but at this point I was pretty dead-set against working for this guy, so I just stared at him. 

We finally got on with the real interview questions — what I was looking for in a job, my availability, what my duties would be, etc. — but only briefly, as if they were of lesser importance than my life choices. When he got back to the topic of triathlons, I thought that maybe he realized just how rude he’d been earlier in the interview and was trying to make up for it by showing interest in the sport. He asked me how often I compete and where I go for races. When I told him that I mainly stick to competitions in Ontario, he said, “My daughter did a race in Guelph.” I told him that I’d raced in Guelph before, that they have a good event there. Then he continued by saying, “Yeah, but she did it when she was finished university. I wouldn’t let her do something stupid like that while she was still in school.” Something stupid like that. Before Mr. Manager had made this remark, I didn’t think that I could have been more thrown off or surprised in this interview, but it must have been his goal to just keep coming after me, making one snide comment after another, each more surprising than the last. Well, he succeeded. I’ll give him that much. 

The interview ended shortly afterwards, and as I was walking to my car I was kicking myself, because I should have told the guy off. I’d had so many opportunities to berate this guy, there’d been so many instances when I should have just stood up and left without saying a word (maybe while holding up a certain finger pointed in Mr. Manager’s direction), but I didn’t take them. After the interview I went for a run, and the whole time all I thought about was going back to the grocery store and all of the different ways I could tell that arrogant manager off. These plans that I came up with on the run seemed pretty great in my mind, so I had full intentions of returning and delivering one of the many speeches which I’d rehearsed over and over as I ran. Of course, this was not a good idea, and my parents quickly convinced me not to go through with it. That’s what parents are for — they talk you out of bad decisions. 

It’s been a while since the interview, and I’ve obviously had quite a bit of time to think about it. At first, I thought that Mr. Manager was probably just crazy, that before the interview he had said to himself, “I don’t care what this next applicant has done with his life — good or bad I’m going to scold him for it.” As time has passed, however, I’ve thought about how lots of different people have asked me why I would put myself through all of the pain and suffering that comes with training for and racing in triathlons. They ask, “Why would you swim, bike, and run for hours on end? Why do that to yourself?” I get so confused when people ask me why I do triathlons, because it just makes sense to me. 

It wasn’t too long ago, however, that I myself thought that endurance athletes were crazy. I only got into triathlons about five years ago, and before then I never would have considered entering the world of endurance sports. I would ride my bike if I needed to get somewhere, but never just for the sake of going on a ride. I would run if I was late for school or work, but you’d never convince me to lace up for an early morning run. And I was always up for a dip in the pool, but I wasn’t going to be swimming any laps. I would see the Tour de France on TV, read about marathon runners in magazines, and hear about countless other endurance sports, and I would pose the exact same question which is now posed to me: “Why would anyone do that to themselves?”

That question is the perfect representation of the endurance community, in my opinion. Because the majority of people in the world aren’t going to understand why we do this to ourselves; the majority of people won’t ever want to be a part of this. And why would they, really? Because when you get down to the brass facts, endurance sports are about one thing: pain. When you’re lacing up your shoes before a run you know that there’s a high probability that you’re going to experience some pain out there. Before you jump in the pool you’re preparing for the exhaustion you’ll feel on lap number 20 as you push towards the wall. In all endurance sports, you know that at some point in training — and definitely in racing — you are going to feel awful. 

In my first triathlon, I had a horrible swim — I thought I was going to drown. I followed the swim with a pretty good ride, but I pushed way too hard on the bike, completely ignoring the fact that I had to run 8k right after. I ran for maybe 2 of those 8 kilometres, walking the other 6. Throughout that whole run, I kept thinking to myself, Why did you do this? This was a terrible decision. Stick to tennis, stick to hockey, those are better sports for you. When I finally crossed the finish line I walked down to the lake and waded out into the water. I lay in the lake for a few minutes, not wanting to move and especially not wanting to talk to anyone after my embarrassing triathlon debut (and finale, as I’d convinced myself during that seemingly endless 8k run). After my dip in the water, however, I was ready to do another race. I was ready to put myself through all of that again — everything which I had hated so much not even 10 minutes earlier — and to push myself even harder so that I could do even better the next time. I knew that my next race would hurt just as much or maybe even more, but I didn’t care. For some reason I wanted to go through that again. And that’s crazy, to hurt so much but to want to do it all over. Every race since then, I’ve had those same thoughts; whether I’m doing really well or really poorly, I think to myself, Why’d you do this? and, Stop and walk for a little bit, and, You’re not doing this again, that’s for sure. But instead of listening to these thoughts, I just shut them up and by the end of the race I’m ready to do another. 

I think that that’s why endurance sports seem so crazy to some people. Humans naturally avoid things which we know will hurt us, it just makes sense. As a child, everyone was told not to touch the stove, because it’s hot and it will burn us, but most of us touched it anyway at some point. Since then, though, we’ve been careful to avoid touching the stove or anything hot, because we know that we’ll get hurt if we do. But endurance athletes have hurt before, we’ve felt the pain in training and racing, and we know that the pain is going to show up again — it’s never not going to be there — and yet we still go back and race again. We choose to hurt ourselves every day, something that’s so unnatural for most humans, but it seems natural for us. That’s why we seem so crazy; that’s why we don’t make sense to people.

I’m not saying that what Mr. Manager did was right, attacking me for my choices and for being a triathlete, but I think that I understand his confusion, at least a little bit. Being an endurance athlete, you’re a part of a very elite club. I don’t care if you’re winning races or if you’re racing against yourself and trying to beat your own best times or if you’re just trying to make it to that finish line, because we all know that it’s going to hurt, yet we all keep coming back for more. I think that it’s something pretty special, this club of ours. So again, I’m not saying that what this store manager said to me was fair or right, but maybe he’s just confused. Maybe someday he’ll decide to go for a run or get on his bike and go out for a ride, and maybe, just maybe, he’ll finally understand why I would ever choose to do “something stupid” like that.