Endurance sports are very popular in the highest income brackets.
Living in an affluent area the past year, I finally understand why.
It’s a mixture of psychology, social status signaling and prestige, and environmental luxury.
Time Investment
Marathons and triathlons require double digit hours of training each week.
Only people with time, wealth and disposable income can readily train for them, they are expensive with the gear they require.
Saying you’re a triathlete sets you apart immediately.
Objective Goals And Achievement
A lot of white collar professionals do work that they don’t “own”. They are managing someone else’s money. They’re watching markets and dealing with multiple variables. They’ve got a team and a boss and office politics to deal with…
Endurance events are objective. Your mile time is objective. You are either getting faster or slower. You need to train X hours.
There’s a feeling of concrete, physical satisfaction that their professional life doesn’t provide.
The Appeal to Psychos
Masochistic personality types that are hyper obsessive and goal oriented and love to operate under stress, endurance events perfectly suit them.
They only have one mode, and that’s to WIN and overdo everything.
Luxury Environment
Real talk, no one wants to run miles or cycle through a shitty neighborhood, obvious reasons.
A luxury zip code though that’s landscapes and gated and probably has running and cycling trails & million dollar clubs?
Perfectly suited for that.
Running Clubs and Triathlons Groups
Running clubs and triathlons groups are another form of networking and relationship building and exclusivity.
Almost Guaranteed everyone in them has multi million net worth.
Show off your new carbon fiber bike, go to the country club after you’re done for lunch.
Avoiding Family Life (or work life) or both
Cernovich beat me to it, but a lot of these men don’t like their wives, are somewhat absentee fathers, and probably hate most of the people they work with.
Training 3 hours a day gives them an out to avoid all these people.
Call To Adventure
White collar life can get boring.
Races are held all over the world in super scenic places.
Find a Perfect opportunity to travel, sight see, compete with your training partners, get away from wife/office/coworkers/kids etc.
You Don’t Need To be Buff
If you’re a scrawny guy in a white collar profession, you’re probably not envisioning being big & brawny.
If you were a lifter, you’d already be doing that.
Being able to run far though, it’s a low barrier to entry and training is super simple.
Of course there are wealthy men who lift, but they were probably doing that before they got rich.
It’s a lot more daunting to build muscle at 35 than it is to start running some miles and spend money on a bike.
And it’s a different mindset.