It is dark, not another runner in sight. The last aid station is a few hundred metres behind. Some fifteen hours after the swim start in the Spanish town of Peníscola, a man loses his way in the night during the closing marathon of the Hispaman 2019. He misses the reflective course markers and follows instead the glitter of rock in the beam of his headlamp. At some point he asks athletes on a support bus for directions, takes their instructions, and thirty minutes later finds his way back onto the course. Just over four hours after that, he crosses the finish line in Villabella del Maestrat after 19 hours and 38 minutes, not before getting lost a second time and calling race control to ask exactly where he was.
What was going through his head out there? That he might fail, that he might not finish the long-distance triathlon. That he would have to accept that, if it came to it. But that he would only stop when someone stopped him. Only then would he know: I gave everything I had, and that is enough.
Pig-headed or resilient? What sounds like a story about mental strength raises an uncomfortable question: where exactly is the line between admirable perseverance and blunt stubbornness?
When Persistence Turns Blind
In endurance sport, this quality is called upon more often than in almost any other hobby, at least among competitive athletes. At the outer edge of physical capacity, it takes will, the strength to overcome problems, or simply the stubbornness to persuade the body to keep suffering.
You drag every bone and sinew along with you when you absolutely must. What counts as "must" is something each of us decides for ourselves. This is not a sports column, nor a psychotherapy session. Experts recommend many things when it comes to showing resilience in hard times.
On the trail of a race where it feels as though every other athlete has already dropped you, and you are in danger of missing the cut-off, mindfulness exercises offer little comfort. You just have to grind forward. Like a machine, deaf to argument, blind to obstacles.
The Science of Persistence
Researchers have known for some time that resilience is more than mere perseverance. American psychologist Emmy Werner demonstrated in her decades-long study on the Hawaiian island of Kauai that roughly one third of high-risk children went on to lead fulfilling lives despite difficult starting conditions. These children shared stable social connections, a realistic self-image, and the ability to experience their lives as meaningful.
But resilience is not the same as stubbornness. A recent German study makes the distinction sharply: rigidity, becoming stuck in fixed behavioural patterns, significantly impairs well-being (Westhoff et al., 2024, Scientific Reports). 114 young adults answered questions about their psychological flexibility five times a day for three weeks.
Rigidity emerged as the single most influential factor. When people feel stuck and cannot adapt their behaviour flexibly, this appears to trigger further difficulties in handling thoughts and emotions.
"Becoming stuck in rigid behavioural patterns can severely undermine our well-being."
The ultra-athlete at the centre of this story navigated the difficult phases of his life, and there were plenty, with the same attitude: these are my priorities, everything else is subordinate to them, this is what counts, this is what sets the course. Because the decisive precondition for productive stubbornness (and its more refined sibling, resilience) is an absolutely clear sense of the why.
When You Can Say Exactly Why You Want Something
Then obstacles may slow you down, but they can hardly stop you. Whether resilient people in endurance sport are simply drawing on a pre-existing disposition, or whether endurance athletes learn resilience and carry it into the rest of their lives, is a question others can settle.
Science has not yet resolved it. Studies suggest that resilience as a character trait tends to draw people toward endurance sport, which in turn reinforces the resilience already present.
Personally, I am simply lazy. I never wanted to be fast, and as a child I naturally gravitated toward the 1,000-metre run rather than the 100-metre sprint. To this day I prefer long-distance triathlon over shorter formats, because I do not have to rush and hurry so much.
That has nothing to do with resilience. If it does, someone will have to prove the opposite to me first. Until then, I am stubbornly sticking to my view.
The Narrow Ridge
When I was sitting in the ambulance, another athlete came over and asked whether he could have the cleat from my cycling shoe, his was broken. I agreed, but only after the paramedics had made their final ruling that I was not, under any circumstances, to get back on the bike. I would probably have climbed back on if no one had stopped me.
That is not particularly sensible, of course. But just as the tree stump in the cover image sends out new shoots because it wants only one thing, to keep growing, I cling to my plans. The road signs say you cannot get through on foot or by bike? I want to see that for myself.
And what are you running from?
