What gets you out there?

Caitlin Clark and the motivations of playing your game.

Basketball star Caitlin Clark in a photo by the Daily Iowan

Like many people, I’ve been introduced to an amazing athlete in the past few weeks: Caitlin Clark, the highest scoring NCAA basketball player ever. She’s an incredible athlete; her balance and precision is beautiful and elegant, and I have no idea why she gets out and does what she does.  

Pretty early in life (maybe because I started so young), I started being disgusted by the performative aspect of sports. I didn’t want to trade my college years for the glory of the school, or my middle age for the glory of someone else going through their college years. For decades now, the purpose of athletic endeavor for me has been intrinsic, to see what I could do against myself.

I ran competitively at a semi-pro level for many years; I was recruited by over 100 schools. I chose none of them. By the time I was going to go to college, I had been running competitively for 12 years. I’d seen a lot of runners get fast and flounder; I’d seen a few good coaches, including my own, and many more bad ones. I looked at the life I would build if I ran competitively in college, where I would be making money for the school while short changing my own experience, and I chose myself. I wanted to see what else life had to offer, beyond running, and I had that option, because I happened to also be good at school and didn’t need running to go. 

I knew that choice was a privilege, and I have never overlooked it. So once I walked away from racing, I never looked back. I was done worrying about hours of sleep and the calories and the type of calories I had taken in. I was done looking at other girls and their musculature and my musculature and at the course and plotting exactly where I could beat them and where they would beat me if I let them. Those problems, for me, were solved ones; that life had been lived. 

That is not a popular choice, because choosing intrinsic motivation over public admiration is not generally the path to the money and fame that describes popular versions of happiness. But I argue that choosing yourself and nurturing your intrinsic motivation is the way to a sustainable and meaningful version of happiness. 

Now, I look at professional and semi-professional sports and wonder why: why play them? Caitlin Clark says that she wants to “help our game move forward…help women’s sports move forward…”*, which is a perfectly good reason to play. But I’m not motivated to sport by external factors like that, and you don’t have to be, either. 

I am not famous, and no one is counting my PRs. I don’t care about super shoes aside from being happy forefoot strikers have options now, and I don’t have any plans to run any marathon. I have nothing to prove to anyone, because no one cares except me.

And that’s why the motivation works. Every night, it’s me and the run. No one looking, no one snapping photos, no one making offers for endorsements and scholarships. That’s athleticism stripped bare, and that’s what gets me out there. 

Whatever gets you out there: medals, PRs, the crowds, or just yourself and your intrinsic motivations, hold on to that. It doesn’t need to work for anyone else except you. You have no one to live up to. Go run.

*CNN Sports