Not only do humans not know how to rest in a room, but when they decide to climb the highest mountain in the Americas (Aconcagua, in the Andes, at 6,961 meters), walking is not enough for them, they must ‘He’s off to the race! This is the feat accomplished by Quebecer Gabriel Lemieux: a 73-kilometer trek with 4,200 meters of elevation gain, in a single stretch to the summit, in 28 hours. In THE Quebec Journal of March 29 which reported his prowess, the 30-year-old man described himself as “just an outdoor tripper”.
But if he’s just a tripper, what does that make of us, who climb 800 meter mountains in two hours, in ordinary hiking boots on marked trails, our ears strained to catch the sound? music of the birds and who take the time to share our sandwiches with the chipmunks on the stone tables at the summit? Simple daydreamers? It would perhaps be necessary to distinguish between trip outdoor” and “ ego trip outdoors “.
Lemieux will now tackle the six mountains he is missing to add the Seven Summits to his collection of trophies. You have surely heard of the Seven Summits, this skewer made up of the highest peak of each continent. It’s big fashion. To the point that we should soon see the same queues appear on Denali, Kilimanjaro, Elbrus and Puncak Jaya as on Everest, at the summit of which Lemieux will at least have the distinction of go jogging. And why not running backwards?
So what is there left to conquer on this planet, I mean after Antarctica on cross-country skis and the Pacific on paddleboards? These well-exploited exploits compete for the attention of an ever more distracted humanity. And organized competitions are not left out. There is probably no stupid way to get your fifteen minutes of fame here on earth, but I admit that the current proliferation of extreme endurance tests makes me downright dizzy.
Death Valley in an ultramarathon? Cycle 5,000 kilometers across three mountain ranges for 51,800 meters of elevation gain in less than twelve days? Nothing too pretty. After all, ” sky is the limit », and not everyone can afford the Russian space program to go read poems in space like a certain circus founder.
The love of heat seems almost universal, but most are content with the Florida trailer park or the all-inclusive in Cayo Coco. The participants of the Marathon des Sables apparently dream of running, walking or crawling across 250 kilometers of desert in 55 degree heat with food self-sufficiency. The average age of those registered is surprising: 51 years old. Or: how I dealt with my mid-life crisis by being delirious with fatigue and heatstroke in the middle of the Sahara and eating sand and rubber food for three days.
Do you prefer the cold? So sign up for the Zero Ice Mile. You will have to swim one mile (1.6 km) in water less than 5 degrees Celsius, without wet suit no neoprene helmet: just you and your Speedo. You can indulge in this fun in any lake or ocean on the planet, and it seems that the waters surrounding Antarctica are very popular…
When I see these people proudly pose for the gallery in front of their ice floe or their conquered mountain, I find in them a resemblance to the safari hunters of Papa Hemingway’s time who strike a pose, all smiles, next to a buffalo carcass or of lion. Same quest for exoticism and thrills. And they were called sportsmen, too.
They also remind me of the collectors who rushed to the Arctic coasts to kill the last great auks and naturalize them at the very moment when the species was becoming extinct. “Let’s take advantage of this changing planet” seems to be their motto. And let’s quickly consume a little piece of this glacier before it melts for good.
That said, running with your lungs on fire in the dunes of the Sahara could be excellent preparation for the climate change of the coming decades. So there would be a Darwinian aspect to this obsession with performance and conquest? This idea would almost make me love the Big Dog’s Backyard Ultra in Bell Buckle, Tennessee: a 6.7 kilometer loop to be completed in less than an hour, over and over again, until “the last one left.” standing wins.” Which has the merit of being clear.
We haven’t even talked about triathlons yet. Just one of these sessions of aqua-pedestrian-road torture represents the sea of drinking for ordinary mortals. If you participate in the Epic5 in Hawaii, you will complete five Ironman-style triathlons of 226 kilometers each in five days. That’s not all: the organizers were looking for a way to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the event, so why not ten in ten days? It was the ÉpicDECA, which a 37-year-old Quebecer, Jean-David Tremblay, is one of three human beings in the world to have completed. He confided, with surprising frankness, to Montreal Journal, from which I also borrowed the instructive examples of competitions mentioned above: “You have to have mental problems to participate in events like that. I was so at the bottom of the barrel. I wanted to take on a super-difficult challenge to forget all the ills that were eating away at me from the inside. »
Here perhaps, coming from the unhealthy depths where being sometimes ventures, is part of the explanation I was looking for. In the fight between them and their demons, some will shoot into the crowd, others will utter death threats on the Internet and others will run ten Ironmans in ten days. Maybe it’s true that they should be admired after all.