I just think we all need to challenge ourselves. We need to see what we're made of. It's very life affirming to do something that takes you to the edge of your abilities. Yes sure some of it might come down to vanity, some of it might be a very Zen quest for inner peace or the meditative state of running on your own for ages, certainly some of it's a stress reliever or just part of an everyday life habit, but mostly I think its just because we need to define our limits and see if there is a way through them. "Test your metal" as the saying goes. It must be the same reason people join the army or the police or sail around the world single-handed. By reaching your boundaries its a way of shouting out to a world that generally doesn't want to listen, "Go on, show us what you've got, do your fucking worst,throw all you've got at me and see if i can't take it"!!
Life is so sophisticated and monitored and controlled and organised now, its a way of escaping from all that. Its so much easier to be complacent and just "not bother" than ever before. So, I say again, we all need a challenge! It's for this reason that I can't understand how people run or train without a specific event or purpose in mind. You have to choose a task, set your ambition and work hard preparing for it, so when and if you achieve it, the success is even sweeter.
I map out the years races i'd like to do and structure a training program to build up to each event. I'm not at all a selfish person, but about this I have to protect my time or else the little time I do dedicate to myself would quickly be swallowed up in the need to do the food shopping, paint the bathroom, take the kids to weekend clubs, gardening etc etc. A little bit of selfishness is a good thing because it then means I'm happier at doing all these other things.
Once I've mapped out the events I want to do the real effort begins. Triathlons require a certain degree of fitness. You can't do anything if your breathing is erratic and your out of balance. It takes perseverance to get the strength to feel balanced,and from balance comes power. Not power in a macho Sly Stallone way but power in an endurance way; in that it is resilient to all the variables. No two steps are ever the same when running; the weather, your environment, your state of mind are always different. That's why training is never boring and that's why the big pay-off is actually doing a race where you get to use all that acquired experience. My best ever result was in the 2005 London Triathlon in which I came 49th. The result was great, I'm still really proud of it, but it's no where near as important as the fact that I set myself a challenge, worked out what i had to do to prepare for it and then actually did it!