As human endurance is pushed to its limit and beyond in extreme sports, why do we do this to ourselves?
WHEN WE hear about extreme adventure sports, we tend to think of leaping off tall buildings or climbing cliffs without a harness. These might seem like reckless pursuits, but most can appreciate what motivates these daredevils. Last weekend, however, the annual World Sauna Champion- ships in Finland received worldwide attention when one of the finalists, Russian Vladimir Ladyzhenskiy, died after spending six minutes in temperatures in excess of 110 degrees. Timo Kaukonen, the reigning Finnish champion, had to be rushed to hospital to receive treatment for severe burns. This is one extreme sport that seems needlessly risky, with little obvious appeal – so why would anyone voluntarily boil themselves?
The competition has been run in Heinola, a city northeast of Helsinki, since 1999, and this year’s championships saw more than 130 competitors from 15 countries take part. The format sees the sauna heated to a searing 110 degrees, and that’s just the starting temperature, with half a litre of water added to the stove every 30 seconds. The last one to stay in the sauna is the winner.
US sportswriter Rick Reilly competed a few years ago as part of his search to find the world's dumbest sport for his book Sports From Hell. "It was so instantly, shockingly, insanely hot, my brain just stopped working. Thinking literally hurt. I tried to stare at the rocks and not blink, because blinking hurt. I tried to take very few breaths, because breathing hurt."
Of course, there are many tests of human foolishness – every year runners are gored by bulls at Pamplona in Spain, while the 200-year-old Cooper’s Hill cheese-rolling competition in Gloucester, in which competitors race down a steep hill in pursuit of a rolling round of cheese, was cancelled this year after too many broken bones and concussions. Reilly recounts the bizarre Yorkshire tradition of ferret- legging, which involves trapping a pair of ferrets in a contestant’s trousers. However, the sad case of Jennifer Strange, who died of water intoxication after drinking large quantities of water during a California radio competition in 2007, shows that seemingly innocuous challenges carry risks.
What compels people to take part in these events? In Ireland, we tend to avoid the more brazenly reckless contests, but there is an increasing demand for triathlons and adventure races such as next weekend’s Gaelforce West, a 65km race involving cycling, running, hiking and kayaking. Today, a dozen competitors will contest the Connemara 100, a 100-mile ultra marathon with a mind-numbing 30-hour time limit.
“People do extraordinary things to learn ‘What sort of person am I? Can I come out of it mentally stronger? Can I push myself that far?’” says Galway man Ray O’Connor, who is running in Connemara today. “This sort of endurance stuff is obviously different from sitting in a sauna, but it is the same drive.”
Galway runner Richard Donovan has won numerous long distance races in extreme conditions around the world. Last year he ran marathons on all seven continents in just five days, 10 hours and eight minutes.
“There’s an addiction to it, I think,” says Donovan. “What happens is that you become so physically and mentally exhausted, you kind of get epiphanies. Everything becomes as simple as putting one foot in front of the other. So much empties out, and the only things that matter stay in. These profound epiphanies, that’s where the addiction comes from.”
If running on land is the most elementary of endurance pursuits, rowing solo across the Atlantic adds the challenge of intense loneliness. Limerick man Seán McGowan did just that earlier this year, rowing from the Canaries to Antigua in 118 days. McGowan admits he nearly died on a few occasions, encountering fierce storms and running out of food – so why do it?
“Because the ocean is there, obviously, but also there’s the satisfaction of doing something extreme, and you learn a lot about yourself. The harder it is, the more you learn,” McGowan says. Is there a masochistic element to a challenge like this, as seems the case in the sauna competition? Pain is relative, says McGowan. Being in the boat was like sitting on a rowing machine in a sauna for 20 hours a day. But when you’re out on the ocean, you have to keep going, you raise the bar, you acclimatise yourself to the pain.”
While the glorious achievement of trans-continental running and trans-oceanic rowing can’t compare to self-boiling in a sauna, parallels surely lie in the determination to push through pain barriers as a means of testing oneself and achieving an unusual level of self-awareness. But self-awareness also extend to knowing when to quit – and the organisers of the World Sauna Championships in Finland have announced the event will not be held again.
