Recently I took a trip with the family to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. I boarded the plane with the idea that I was going to spend a portion of the flight on the next blog, and then finish the blog over the five days we were in Mexico. I always have this grand idea in my head of all the things I will accomplish while on vacation. You would think I would've learned by now that when you travel with kids, there is very little "kid free" down time; a vacation is really a trip more than it is a vacation. With the five minutes of free time I had on the flight over, I decided to flip through the flight magazine and find some mindless article to read. I was pleasantly surprised to come across the article I posted below. This is just the kind of reading that motivates endurance-based athletes, which probably had something to do with me deciding to go for a 10 mile run in the deep sand when it was 95 degrees outside two days later. The article does an incredible job of highlighting the limits extreme sports enthusiast are willing to take, and why these thrill seekers push these limits. Enjoy the read!
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Felicity Aston walks and watches Antarctica
Associated Press
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Crazy or enlightened? When trying to understand the psyche of those who participate in extreme sports, that’s the million-dollar question.
The most terrifying moments of Felicity Aston’s trip came as she watched the plane that had dropped her off fly away. It finally sank in that she would be by herself for the next two months in a way that very few people in the world ever had been. Fifty-nine days later, she would become the first woman to ski across the continent of Antarctica alone. But at that moment, she just had to take her first step. “You’re looking at a landscape where not only is there no human life, but there’s no life at all,” she says. “Something about that moment, the tiny bits of DNA, the prehistoric me were saying, ‘This is really, really wrong.’ Conquering that fear was the hardest part.”While overcoming that initial shock may have been the greatest challenge, it was only incrementally greater than the many others Aston knew she would face. Standing became almost unbearable, with every muscle in her body sore from spending 12 hours a day on skis. Sitting wasn’t any better; she had open sores, possibly from exposing her skin to temperatures of 40 below every time she went to the bathroom. Her ribs ached from the bloody cough caused by the dry, cold air. During blinding storms, she became nauseated because she was so disoriented that she couldn’t make out up from down. And at night, alone in her tent, she had difficulty falling asleep as she faced the dread of knowing she’d have to do it all over again tomorrow — and the next day, and the day after that.
It is easy to blame ignorance for attempting such a feat, but Aston knew exactly what she was getting into. An experienced arctic racer, she had spent three continuous years in Antarctica working as a meteorologist and wrote a book, Call of the White: Taking the World to the South Pole, about trekking to the South Pole with a group of women. Which, of course, begs the question: With full knowledge that not only would she be in intense pain but that she’d also be putting her life at risk, is Aston crazy for skiing across the South Pole?
The popularity of extreme sports, from big-wave surfing to ultramarathon racing to BASE jumping, has skyrocketed in recent years, and with this growth have come people who continually push the limits of what we believe the human body is capable of accomplishing.
But as these sports have matured, the image of those who attempt to master them has failed to catch up. The teens and 20-somethings portrayed in the nascent era of extreme sports, made popular in the early 1990s by shows like MTV Sports, are grown up now, and they are not the adrenaline-fueled death seekers that it is so easy to imagine them being, according to several consultants with the Association for Applied Sport Psychology (AASP).
“It’s simplistic to call what they are seeking an adrenaline rush,” says Sam Zizzi, a professor of sport and exercise psychology at West Virginia University and a certified AASP consultant. “I find them to be wired more like artists and people who want to experience a higher level of expression. Maybe they’re wired to experience life a bit more.”
Studies of extreme athletes have found them to be highly educated people motivated by the desire to continually develop their skills, a description that could fit many lawyers, doctors or bankers. They differ, though, in what they seek in life, and when they talk about their goals, your reaction might change from, “Are they crazy?” to “Maybe they are more sane than everyone else.”
As the developed world moves from a manufacturing economy to a knowledge-based one, the need for and opportunities to test one’s physical strength have diminished significantly. Whereas an assembly-line worker may have needed powerful arms to haul heavy equipment and received acknowledgment of his strength from his bosses and colleagues, many workers now are rewarded, in part, for their abilities to sit for most of the day staring at a screen.
“Many people’s jobs do not offer a way to feel fully human,” Zizzi says. “Pushing the potentials of the body is a natural fit in a world that is turning people into sedentary, obese creatures. It’s almost a reaction to the fact that our human existence is inside a box staring at a computer screen. To put your life at risk, to jump off a bridge with a parachute, can sound like a good idea.”
While hundreds of thousands of weekend warriors seek to escape the tedium of the daily grind by tackling a marathon or jumping out of a helicopter with a pair of skis on their feet, scant few throw away the steady paycheck, the 401(k) and the house in the suburbs for a life that allows them to pursue these innate desires with little interference from the traditionally stable path. The material sacrifices — living in a tent for months on end, no health insurance, an uncertain financial future — may seem as terrifying as a 60-foot wave to the average nine-to-fiver, but to those who take the leap, the rewards, be they physical health or spiritual fulfillment, are worth more than the steadiest six-figure paycheck.
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Steph Davis scaling new heights
Keith Ladzinski
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“There’s an almost religious aspect to doing these kinds of physical tests,” explains Duncan Simpson, an assistant professor of sports, exercise and performance psychology at Barry University in Miami. “There is a spiritualism involved, an opportunity to be alone, to be reflective about themselves and the world. These people find a higher power, not necessarily in a religious sense — but it is a transcendence when they push their bodies to the limits.”
During her solo trip to the South Pole, Aston often asked, “Why me?”
It wasn’t self-pity but a deep, internal probing — a way of trying to figure out why she was one of the lucky few who got to see the beauty of the Transantarctic Mountains and had the privilege of pushing her body past what she thought was possible.
“One day, I came to the edge of a rise, and the view was so great it felt as if I could see the ocean,” she recalls. “It made me want to cry. It was a spiritual experience, just realizing the beauty of what we have and how lucky we are to experience it. That feeling happened a dozen times a day.”
Everyone experiences those moments in life that truly capture the role of luck — but extreme athletes tend to seek out those moments more actively and feel them more frequently, says Kristen Dieffenbach, a USA Cycling elite-level-licensed coach and certified consultant with AASP.
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Steph Davis base jumping
Keith Ladzinski
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“There is that perfect marriage of exertion and euphoria, where time stands still and everything is right,” says Dieffenbach, who has completed a triple Ironman (that’s right: 24 miles of kayaking, 78.6 miles of biking and 78 miles of running). “That’s what they are after: that moment in time, that feeling.”
While many athletes say they fear growing addicted to the euphoria, in practice, few find the transition from the natural world to the concrete one to be a burden. In fact, those who study sports psychology find that conquering extreme feats allows these athletes to embrace the joys that others take for granted.
It’s much easier to appreciate the mundane privilege of sleeping in a bed after spending 50 hours (two sunrises) paddling, biking and running, Dieffenbach says. Having a cup of tea is a great pleasure when one doesn’t have to melt snow to make it, according to Aston.
A significant part of attempting these feats is realizing one’s ability to overcome fear and pain to accomplish a goal. As athletes continue to push the boundaries of what’s physically possible, people who study them are realizing that the mind is just as great an impediment as the body.
“We are just scratching the surface of what our physical and mental capabilities are,” says Simpson, who has interviewed dozens of ultraendurance athletes.
Extreme athletes use that awareness not only to appreciate the petty comforts of everyday life but also to overcome the nuisances, and here is where researchers see a significant direct benefit to taking part in sports.
The mental skills people need to push themselves through exhaustion, pain and hallucinations also allow them to seemingly ignore daily inconveniences. Bart Yasso, the chief running officer at Runner’s World magazine, says something always goes wrong during an ultramarathon, but those who compete actually look forward to those challenges.
“If you’re not challenging yourself, you’re missing out,” he explains. “If I didn’t do a race because there were a lot of hills or because it was hot out, I would have missed out on so much.”
In most extreme sports, the actual moment of competition is a time of solitude. Sprinting through the woods or climbing a vertical rock face without ropes are solo pursuits in which one is competing mostly with self-doubt and fear. This aspect of such events makes it easy to bestow on participants reputations as loners.
Solitude is a powerful motivator for many athletes, but so is the community that develops around these sports. Very few people become celebrities outside of the tiny worlds in which they compete, so it’s common to meet world champions as well as to toe the starting line right next to them.
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Felicity Aston walking across Antarctica
Associated Press
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Perhaps no one exemplifies this power of community more than Scott Jurek. Arguably the greatest ultra runner of all time, Jurek has won just about every major race of distances greater than 50 miles. He also has had a support crew routinely douse him in ice during a 135-mile race through Death Valley, Calif., and had friends accompany him on training runs that lasted for days.
In most sports, the closest an amateur can get to his idol is wearing a jersey, but the person who finishes last in an ultra often finds Jurek, the winner, cheering for him at the finish line. Races may be about competition on the course, but in the tight-knit communities of extreme athletes, completing a task is done, in part, through others out there giving more than they thought they had.
“I love that I can go to a race and volunteer,” Jurek says. “Engaging people and watching them cross the finish line allows me to relive what I go through.”
Part of what drew Steph Davis to rock climbing 20 years ago was the community. Davis was not particularly athletic and tried climbing while in college. She fell in love immediately and, a week into law school, she traded a steady career path for a life in the mountains.
“Through my 20s, I was anxious about material stuff, but I was also living in my car,” says Davis, a professional climber, BASE jumper and wing-suit flyer. “I think the idea of security is an illusion. A lot of people who have gone down the more traditional career paths have had their ups and downs too.”
In sports like climbing, the term dirtbag is treated with reverence. The most loyal members of these communities turn sport into a profession that usually pays almost nothing. Many of them have college degrees. They choose a life of sleeping in tents and bathing in frigid streams because every life involves trade-offs, and the freedom to pursue their passions is worth more than the perceived comforts that others pursue.
Motivation plays an outsized role in our abilities to achieve goals, and researchers have found that although extreme athletes are among the most motivated people, their motivations differ from those of others. While working hard may lead to higher pay, which will lead to a bigger house in a better school district and on and on, professional rock climbers or surfers seem more aware of and able to overcome the never-ending loop of this line of thought.
They push themselves harder so that next time they can take it a step further. The reward is in achieving a goal as well as in being able to see something new; to go deeper into the woods or higher into the sky the next time.
“It’s not just about the challenge,” says Dieffenbach. “It’s about being able to continually see and experience new things.”
What drives these athletes more than any other motivation is the goal of surviving while continually pushing. They want to survive so they can keep trying, and that is where intelligence and discipline come in.
After a year of climbing, Davis began free-soloing — climbing without ropes — some extremely challenging peaks. On her first attempt, 1,500 feet above the base of Longs Peak in Colorado, the fear of falling struck her.
She climbed the route four more times that summer: Her fear of falling had transformed into a fascination.
“You can’t climb without a rope if you’re going to get scared,” she says. “I wanted to learn more about falling, so I started skydiving.”
Skydiving led to wing-suit flying (leaping from a high altitude with a suit that allows one to slow the speed at which he or she falls, translating that into forward momentum), which led to BASE jumping. These sports are considered some of the most dangerous in the world, but Davis does not have a death wish. She is a published author who has a happy life with her husband in the beautiful town of Moab, Utah. So why increase the level of complexity?
“These people are very smart and analytical,” Dieffenbach says. “They enjoy planning routes and developing a strategy for the next challenge.”
Extreme sports offer intelligent people a way to hone and use their skills without having to be tied down to the strictures that so often exploit those talents, she explains. The comparison to musicians and artists is frequent in the research for this reason. The artist analogy is also frequent in the athletes’ appreciation for every moment, but there is one way in which it fails: A mistaken brushstroke won’t kill you.
It seems almost a contradiction that these athletes love life so much yet put it at risk, but the awareness of the precious ephemerality of every movement gives them the power to avoid worrying about what might happen so they can appreciate what is happening right now.
“Part of loving life is doing everything you can to appreciate it while you’re here,” says Davis, reciting a mantra familiar in her community. “I never have that feeling of, ‘I wish I could have gone down that road,’ because I have gone down it. That’s what life is all about.”
Pushing the Extreme
Skiing not your thing? Find rock-climbing boring? Athletes have shown their grit and made others question their sanity in dozens of ways.
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Felix Baumgartner
Jorg Mitter/Red Bull Content Pool
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Skydiving may be a rush, but it ends quickly unless you’re Felix Baumgartner, who in October 2012 rode a balloon 24 miles into the air and leaped out, landing less than 10 minutes later. On the way down, he not only broke the record for the fastest and highest free fall, he became the first human to break the sound barrier.
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| Garrett McNamara |
Pro surfer Garrett McNamara did the only thing he could after breaking the world record for the largest wave ever surfed: He broke it again this past January, dropping into a bone-crusher off of the coast of Portugal that was estimated to have been as tall as 100 feet.
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| Nik Wallenda |
How do you follow up crossing 1,800 feet of Niagara Falls while standing on a 2-inch-thick wire? After completing that feat in 2012, Nik Wallenda strolled across a major Florida highway in January, traveling 600 feet on a thin wire suspended almost 200 feet above the road.
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Eric Larsen
Save the Poles/MCT/Newscom
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Eric Larsen can’t seem to get enough of the cold. In 2010, he became the first person to travel to the North Pole (a 41-day journey), to the South Pole (a 750-mile ski traverse) and to the summit of Mount Everest in a 365-day period.
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Steve Knowlton
Zuma Press, Inc./Alamy
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Think running an ultramarathon is tough? Try running across the entire United States. In 2010, Steve Knowlton traveled from Seattle to Key Largo, Fla., by himself, putting one foot in front of the other for 3,717 miles.
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Phil Harwood
Images of Africa Photobank/Alamy
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The Congo River is the deepest and perhaps most dangerous in the world. Phil Harwood canoed all 3,000 miles of it, braving vicious animals and political unrest. An attempt by three professional kayakers to do a similar trip ended when one was eaten by a crocodile.
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Martin Strel
Matt Carr/Getty Images
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Martin Strel has swam many of the rivers of the world, but perhaps his most impressive feat was in 2007 when he swam 3,274 miles of the Amazon, spending 10 hours a day in the water for 66 consecutive days.
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Charlie Head
Courtesy Charlie Head
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Charlie Head traveled on a stand-up paddleboard for 500 miles around the southern coast of England in 2012, but that feat was mere practice for his autumn journey across the entire Atlantic Ocean on a board about the size of a dining-room table.
Ethan Rouen is a Ph.D. student at Columbia Business School and a contributing writer at Fortune.com. He writes about (and sometimes partakes in) crazy sports and sane sports forAmerican Way.
