If you enjoy spending a lot of time preparing for something with minimal payoff, don’t mind talking to yourself, and have a high pain tolerance (emotional and physical!), then running and comedy might be for you!
Forced to take a step back from training due to an Achilles overuse injury, I was constrained to the couch, and occasionally the stationary bike, for six weeks while my pesky tendon healed at the glacial pace of a stoned DMV employee.
With training removed from the equation, I needed something else to occupy my time.
I, like many athletes, will occasionally fantasize about what I might be able to do with my one wild and precious life were it not for the hours of training I log each week. Write a novel? Cure cancer? Put an end to world hunger while simultaneously solving the climate crisis and making time each day to floss my teeth and call my mom?
Instead of doing anything productive, helpful, or remotely healthy, I started writing jokes.
If you enjoy spending a lot of time preparing for something with minimal payoff, don’t mind talking to yourself, and have a high pain tolerance (emotional and physical!), then running and comedy might be for you!
My first stand-up gig was a comedy competition. I was on stage first, apparently because I have committed some grave crime in a past life (murder? Witchcraft? Just being a woman?). When I stepped into the spotlight, my heart looked more like a VO2 max test than voluntary public humiliation. I immediately sweat through my leather jacket, which is a rookie mistake (not every new comedian needs to wear a motorcycle jacket). I stumbled through the first 90 seconds of my set, then immediately forgot the rest. Not just the rest of my set– the rest of the English language. I spent the next 90 seconds staring blankly into a crowd of people, all simultaneously deciding if right then was the best time to grab a stiffer drink, or escape altogether.
I bombed.
I was hooked.
Ultrarunning and comedy have much in common. Both build rejection and resilience (shoutout to the WSER lottery for helping me hone my tolerance for rejection). Both require consistency, and a dedication to honing your craft. Both give you ample time to be surrounded by middle-aged men having a mid-life crisis.
“The pursuit of ultrarunning is inherently absurd,” says Andy Pearson, host of the comedic podcast Between Two Pines. We pay hundreds of dollars to go have an awful, painful experience out in the mountains, and then we usually end up right where we started. If that’s not absolutely hilarious, I don’t know what is.”
Running is funny. We are essentially animals who have self-elected to recreationally escape from absolutely nothing. Some of us do this for 100 miles at a time, and at an intensity that requires exogenous M&M’s and lubricant to sustain it. The best-case scenario for many of us is one fewer toenail and the satisfaction of seeing our UltraSignup score creep up by .5%.
“Comedy can really add to a run,” says Dominic Grossman, co-host of Between Two Pines. “If I have a good run, it’s like a nice slice of bread. But if I have a good run with funny jokes, I feel like it’s the greatest bread and creamiest butter and all my senses are overloaded. It really is way better to run and laugh.”
While running can feel a bit self-serious at times, I’m not alone in looking for the humor in it. Tommy McClellan is a stand-up and runner based in Washington D.C., with an entire stand-up special dedicated to his love for running. His running provides plenty of comedy material and offers a mechanism for dealing with setbacks.
“I can’t have one without the other; they’re both intrinsically who I am,” says McClellan. “My life and career are consumed by both. Running helps alleviate the pain of comedy, and comedy helps alleviate the pain of running. It’s fun to think about comedy when running, and it’s fun to joke about running when doing stand-up.”
Comedy and running are important outlets for many of us to explore and externalize our feelings in a controlled setting. Want to get to know yourself? A great way to find out who you really are is to run for 23 hours straight, or, do a tight 20 in a bar full of intoxicated tourists who were unaware that they would be experiencing stand-up on that particular evening. My apologies to the patrons of Charlie’s Bar and Grill.
I often try to work out jokes in my head on runs. Running allows me to explore an idea to its furthest conclusion rather than shutting it down immediately. Writing a good joke often requires writing 69 bad jokes. Running can be a judgment-free zone to let your creativity flow as freely as aid station ibuprofen.
“I think that ultra running is super mental and comedy can be the key to getting the mind to relax during stressful parts of races, even if it doesn’t seem appropriate,” says Grossman. “Courtney Dauwalter gets it and she kicks ass while telling jokes mid-race.”
Jokes are meant to subvert our expectations. Using humor—or mid-race dad jokes—can force our brains into a new way of thinking and be a powerful way of reversing course should things go wrong.
Not only can it help us get unstuck midrace, but comedy and ultrarunning are both a powerful check on the ego. Vomiting so hard that aid station volunteers wonder if what you need isn’t salt, but maybe an exorcism is hard. Bombing in front of a packed out, and realizing that you still have eleven minutes left in your set is hard. The highs are high, but the lows most certainly are low. At least you usually get a free t-shirt or koozie out of the deal.
“Running is essentially self-gratification and also self-punishment at the same time,” says Grossman. “Running gives you an ego boost if you look at who’s behind you, but is endlessly humbling when you realize every runner in the world has goals they just can’t fulfill. Animals must think that we’re running so hard for very important survival reasons, but it’s just a very basic game we made up called ‘whoever gets there first wins!’”
Running, as in comedy, is all about practice. I like to think of each race, run or workout the same way I think about each stand-up show, as like a “touch” on a soccer ball. The more you can get, the better. You have to keep showing up day after day, with no guarantee of the outcome. Maybe the race day weather will suck. Maybe the crowd at your stand-up gig will entirely be retired folks who thought they were attending a senior citizens Bossanova night because of a mix-up at the venue, and you’re worried your set, which is almost entirely about Tinder, might not land. You have to play with the cards you’re dealt.
While strong finishes and absolutely crushing a set feel amazing, those are rarely the days we learn the most from. A DNF, or a bomb, is a new starting point. What matters most is how you go forward, and how much fun you have along the way.
If your comedy about running is even half as good as your writing about running, then I want to be in the crowd every time!