Wind Assisted (Episode 66)

Thinking about choice in the context of endurance sport is easy. We are faced with dozens of choices all the time - clothing, coaches, training, races, nutrition, clubs, the list goes on. However, have you ever taken a more nuanced approach to the choices being made by those around you? Your teammates, your athletes, your coach? We talk a lot about making choices in training - the choice to do that ride or run or the choice not to, and those choices in this context are often laden with values. To believe that “success” in sport comes only through certain choices (the choice to work hard, for example), belies the reality that not everyone lives in the same ecosystem and the choices in front of us are different. A person’s choice to workout four days instead of seven days a week does not make them any less capable of being fast, strong, or successful in sport, but culture and its communicators (us) often judge them for it when they don’t meet a goal they have set for themselves (“well, you know, if they had trained more…”).

We make these judgments absent any context because what do we really know about the intricacies of everyone’s lives? People can want to be fast, strong, and successful, in fact they can consciously choose that as a goal, but maybe they lack the life context and identity privileges - free time, access to training, financial flexibility, or safety - to make the choice a reality.

When we attribute success to “good” choices in endurance sports, including hard work, we are simplifying something actually quite complicated. Sure, the choice to run or not run might feel easy, but it isn’t for everyone. A person may have multiple pulls on their time, meaning they can’t run even though they would choose to. Reducing a person’s athletic abilities to choice is unfair and lacks the critical consciousness we argue we all need. If we understand choice as more nuanced, we believe we can be better coaches, training partners, and club leaders. What is simple for one person may be fraught with difficulty for another. Removing “choice” from its context does a major disservice to our endurance sport community because it assumes that all choices are neutral, the same, and clear.

Hell yeah: - Old Navy “All-idays” Jingle Jammies commercial - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIEkhJNS8uY

Hell nah: Sports Washing - https://www.npr.org/2021/11/29/1058048696/saudi-arabia-formula-1-china-olympics-human-rights-sports

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