Participating in endurance sports requires two main things: lots of time and money. Time because training, travelling, racing, recovery, and the inevitable hours one spends tinkering with gear accumulate. And money because, well, our sports are not cheap.
Socioeconomic Status of Endurance Athletes
No surprise, then, that data collected in 2015 by USA Triathlon shows that the median income for triathletes is $126,000, with about 80 per cent either working in white-collar jobs—professions such as medicine, law, and accounting—or currently enrolled as students. Running USA surveys conducted in 2015 and 2017 found that nearly 75 per cent of runners earn more than $50,000, and about 85 per cent work in white-collar, service, or educational settings.
The cost of equipment, race entry fees, and travel to events works to exclude lower socioeconomic status individuals.
There are a handful of obvious reasons the vast majority of endurance athletes are employed, educated, and financially secure. The ability to train and compete demands that one has time, money, access to facilities, and a safe space to practice. Research published in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine found that low-income neighborhoods were 4.5 times less likely to have recreational facilities—like pools, gyms, and tennis courts—than high-income neighborhoods.
Reasons for the Correlation
This is a question sociologists are just beginning to unpack. One hypothesis is that endurance sports offer something that most modern-day knowledge economy jobs do not: the chance to pursue a clear and measurable goal with a direct line back to the work they have put in.
Another reason white-collar workers are flocking to endurance sports has to do with the sheer physicality involved. For a study published in the Journal of Consumer Research in February 2017, a group of international researchers set out to understand why people with desk jobs are attracted to gruelling athletic events.
The pursuit of pain has become so common among well-to-do endurance athletes.
What emerged was a resounding theme: the pursuit of pain. “By flooding the consciousness with gnawing unpleasantness, pain provides a temporary relief from the burdens of self-awareness,” write the researchers. “When leaving marks and wounds, pain helps consumers create the story of a fulfilled life. In a context of decreased physicality, [obstacle course races] play a major role in selling pain to the saturated selves of knowledge workers, who use pain as a way to simultaneously escape reflexivity and craft their life narrative.”
The Great Irony
The pursuit of pain has become so common among well-to-do endurance athletes that scientific articles have been written about what researchers are calling “white-collar rhabdomyolysis,” referring to a condition in which extreme exercise causes kidney damage. The great irony, of course, is that one of the main reasons people pursue education, financial security, and solid employment is to create comfortable lives.
Endurance sports provide a necessary outlet, offering concrete measures of a job well done.
Endurance sports provide a necessary outlet, offering concrete measures of a job well done and the chance to deal with physical suffering—albeit in a voluntary, defined, and immediately escapable environment. While high-income athletes have access to a variety of hobbies and pastimes, many turn to endurance sports for their unique combination of physical and mental challenges, measurable outcomes, and a sense of achievement that’s hard to find elsewhere.
