Have you ever run a difficult race? Walked, biked or swum a long distance? Landed a dangerous trick on a skateboard or skis, or perfected a complex shot in tennis, basketball or hockey? What is the most physically ambitious — or stressful — thing you have ever done?
What was it like? How did you feel afterward? Did it make you want to continue to push yourself — or to back off?
The Barkley Marathons is an extreme footrace that requires participants to navigate 100 miles of rugged terrain in rural Tennessee in no more than 60 hours. It also has the equivalent of 60,000 feet of ascent and descent, about twice the elevation of Mount Everest. As its founder said, “Anything that makes it more mentally stressful for the runners is good.”
Last month, Jasmin Paris became the first woman to complete the race. Here is how the moment shown in the image above was captured in a New York Times article:
At the end of the run, Paris sank to the ground in front of a yellow gate that marks the start and finish of the event, which consists of five roughly 20-mile laps.
“The final minutes were so intense, after all that effort it came down to a sprint uphill, with every fiber of my body screaming at me to stop,” Paris said in an email.
The same week, a professional rock climber named Beth Rodden published an essay in the Times Opinion section headlined “Tired of Sucking It Up as a Climber, I’ve Embraced a Softer Strength.” Near the beginning of the essay, she describes the “hard core” life she once lived:
Hanging in the middle of Half Dome was an ordinary thing. Ascending ropes with bloody knuckles and a heavy pack thousands of feet off the ground was as conventional to me as grabbing the bananas and apples in the produce section: just part of my day. Climbers pride themselves on being better than normal people. Not just in the “I climbed a mountain and you didn’t” type of way, but in the fabric of how we approach life. How we eat, where we sleep, the stories we walk away with: It’s all better.
By the time I was in my mid-20s, I was a walking archetype of how to succeed in that world because of the belief system I followed: suck it up, persevere, win. I was used to pushing the level of climbing further, used to doing things that no other women had done — and even, a couple of times, things that no guys had done.
But later in the essay, Ms. Rodden writes:
I can’t say there was one moment, a specific event that made me start to question the “suck it up, Rodden” theme song I had lived by for so long. I got divorced, and eventually remarried; I got injured over and over. After years of injuries I had a child, and that led to relearning my body. Maybe it was the scale of all those changes in my life that forced me to reconsider the way I’d always done things, or maybe I just got fed up with the facade. Why was it noble to climb through cracks on El Cap soaked with climbers’ urine, but leaking while jogging postpartum was something to be ashamed of?
Gradually, I began to question the old mentality. I began to be more open about what I found value in, and learned to share my pain and my fears with friends instead of hiding them behind a perma-smile. I started to be kinder to myself, and to be frank that, as effective as it had been for me and my career, I just didn’t see the point in suffering for the sake of a climb anymore. In letting go of that, I was surprised to find a new kind of strength — something perhaps truer and more durable than the ability to just plow through.
Students, read both articles and then tell us:
Are you attracted to physical challenges in general? What are some of the things you have done to push yourself? What emotional or physical effects did they have on you?
Whom do you relate to more — an athlete like Ms. Paris who challenges herself to win, even at great physical cost, or one like Ms. Rodden, who has goals but is more interested in taking care of herself than suffering?
To what extent do you — or those around you — believe that people should “suck it up” in order to achieve their goals? How has that attitude affected your life, whether in sports, at school, at work, or even in your relationships?
Do you think Ms. Rodden is right that the world of sports is “starting to embrace a softer kind of strength?” Do you think that “taking care of ourselves, whatever that looks like, can now be as celebrated as dodging death for a summit” — or will going to extremes always be rewarded?
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned from Barkley,” Ms. Paris says in the article, “it’s that you never know what you are capable of until you try.” Do you agree with this sentiment in general? How does it apply to your life in terms of sports or anything else?
What athletes do you admire most? To what extent do you think they push themselves to extremes? What have you learned from them?
Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public and may appear in print.
Find more Student Opinion questions here. Teachers, check out this guide to learn how you can incorporate these prompts into your classroom.
