Why are we doing all this?

Jogging in the early morning.

Studio late evening.

Lifting, cycling, running, swimming.

And why these big goals?

Yes, I would like to cycle up Mont Ventoux again, or the Galibier.

And if the bones played along, I would do Hawaii again, the Ironman.

Millions of amateur athletes have similar dreams, which aren't all that different from those of the pros, they just have more talent.

So some drag themselves to the first marathon and others in the direction of the Olympics.

The difference, I like to say, is smaller than you think.

The small athlete's laurels, like the big one's, are the recognition accorded by others - and by oneself.

Not because of the money

A few years ago I sat down with the late writer and endurance athlete Günter Herburger.

An unusual man with unusual views that I sometimes think of when I see what some professionals go through to maybe, just maybe, have a medal pinned to their neck and maybe a laurel leaf from the President.

How they chase the Olympic spirit to Sochi, Beijing, Absurdistan.

Most people don't do it for the money.

We don't want to talk about the few big earners in individual sports, but about the many small Olympians.

Why are they doing this to themselves?

Four years of sacrifice and torment for a few warm words and a few minutes on TV?

Herburger couldn't do much with the pros.

Their careers may or may not survive, he said, which is the normal risk for social climbers in almost any industry.

But where sport is not an industry but a pastime, that is, with us amateurs, Herburger saw its real appeal.

He didn't see it in the marveled battle for victories, but in personal experience.

In the exhaustion, for example, into which one could run further than imaginable, and from which one finds one's way out with new strength.

He invoked the realization that there was something slumbering within us that we no longer knew, a second and third force that would only appear when we needed it.

A power that is not only found in super athletes, but in all of us.

The philosopher Peter Sloterdijk called the proximity of exhaustion and exhilaration a “paradoxical unity”.

The ultra runner Herburger recommended that the recreational athlete consider sport not as work but as an adventure.

As an expression of joy and freedom.

Sometimes I think that wouldn't be bad advice for professionals either.

But can they do anything with it at all?

Most, I'm afraid, can't.