09/19/2026 @ Cherry Creek Reservoir

4800 S Dayton St

Greenwood Village, CO 80111

7:30-9:00 AM MST

Topic(s):

Why Do We Compete So Hard?

We all argee that we want to compete because we want to improve. But for racing, why does someone else's performance matter so much to us?

We train to beat people we may barely know, starting to become familiar at each meet. We can run a personal best and still be disappointed because that same person, who we usually beat, ran faster. We can run slower than our best and feel incredible because we smoked them or won. And sometimes the person who pushes us hardest is also the person we respect most.

Principle 1: Competition helps us become excellent.

If someone else can achieve a benchmark you didn't think you could, it opens up a new possibility, helping you break it. When Roger Bannister broke the 4-minute mile, once thought to be impossible, multiple sub-4 runs came within months. A rival can force us to discover abilities we would never have found alone.

Principle 2: Competition removes running's value.

If our performance only feels meaningful when it is better than someone else's, then we are no longer valuing the running itself. A sense of achievement depends solely on where we stand relative to other people.

Sources (Read Before):

none.

Make some notes on interesting points. The point is not to quiz on the fine minute details (dates, names, etc)--you can read all, some, or none. Zero pressure to read all, especially if you do not have time. These sources are merely meant to be convenient ways to help inform your opinion and fortify/build it up, not lectures. You can (and are encouraged to) read other sources as well to further gather information and work into your worldviews.

Interesting Points:

• A rival can be both your greatest obstacle and one of the main reasons you improve.

• If you run a personal best but finish second, while someone else runs a slower time and wins, who had the better race? What does your answer reveal about what you think racing is actually for?

• Nietzsche might push us to ask whether beating someone else is less important than surpassing what you previously thought you could do.

• Aristotle raises a different question: perhaps competition is valuable because it gives us a setting in which we can practice and demonstrate excellence, rather than because winning itself is inherently valuable.

• Sartre says that maybe we don't just want to run fast. We want to be seen as someone who runs fast. How much of competitive running is about the experience itself, and how much is about how we appear to other people?

• There is a major difference between wanting to win and needing to win. At what point does competition stop being motivation and start controlling you?

Discussion Questions:

1. Why do we actually care about beating other people? What does winning give us that a personal best doesn't?

2. Is the ultimate purpose of competition becoming better than other people or becoming better than you were before?

3. If you ran a race completely alone (time trial) and received the exact same satisfaction as winning against a stacked field, would you still want to race?

4. Can you genuinely want your rival to run their best race and desperately want to beat them? Is there a contradiction there?