Why this sense of stakes and heroism? Of course I’ve been wondering the whole time: why do people do this, anyway? Whenever I pose the question directly, runners reply ironically: I’m a masochist: I need somewhere to put my craziness; type A from birth, etc. I begin to understand that joking about this question is not an evasion but rather an intrinsic part of answering it. Nobody has to answer this question seriously because they are already answering it seriously—with their bodies and their willpower and their pain. The body submits itself in earnest, in degradation and commitment, to what words can only speak of lightly. Maybe this is why so many ultrarunners are former addicts: they want to redeem the bodies they once punished, master the physical selves whose cravings they once served.