More Goggins

Once upon a time David Goggins weighed 280 pounds. He was a powerlifter, a Navy SEAL who never ran more than short distances, an American stationed in Iraq. It was 2005, he was thirty, and he already had a tour of duty in Afghanistan to his credit.

When Goggins' stint in the giant sandbox was up, though, he remembered one operation in particular. A mission to save SEALS by helicopter from a dangerous situation went awry, and eleven soldiers died. In response Goggins set out to fund-raise for the Special Operations Warrior Foundation, which gives college tuition to children of special operations members who die on duty.

How would he raise the money? By running. But David Goggins was no Saturday-morning-10K kind of guy. He entered only the hardest races, the longest and most demanding. While ninety pounds melted off his frame, he put one foot in front of the other to train for and complete a marathon. Later he ran a hundred miles in nineteen hours. Then he completed a double Ironman distance triathlon (that's a 4.8-mile swim, a 224-mile bike, and a 52.5-mile run). He ran a one-hundred-mile race considered one of the toughest ever, sponsored by the Hawaii Ultra Running Team (H.U.R.T.).

David was just getting started. He ran the grueling Badwater Ultramarathon, which begins in Death Valley (282 feet below sea level) and concludes 135 miles later atop Mount Whitney (8,360 feet above sea level). He competed in the Ultra Centric run, covering a record-setting 203.5 miles in forty-eight hours. Yes: That's one man, two days, two hundred-plus miles.

By late 2008 Goggins had raised three hundred thousand dollars for the foundation. That feat, and his ability to withstand pain, make him an exceptional human being. What he is doing, though — running to raise money — is not unusual at all. In fact, if there is any place in America in which sweating for a cause has become completely ordinary, it is in endurance sports.

The role model is the Race for the Cure, now better known as the Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Nancy Brinker launched this grass-roots campaign to raise money and awareness in 1982, after her sister Susan died of breast cancer. To date the race and its related fund-raising efforts have invested $1.2 billion in research, education, and support.

It is a staggering sum, amassed one runner and one mile at a time. More important, this race has provided inspiration. All over the country now, on nearly any Saturday morning, thousands of runners line up in fund-raising races of one kind or another — 5Ks, 10Ks, half marathons, marathons, triathlons — all for some purpose in addition to the athletic competition.

How does it work? Either the entry fee is higher than for a purely recreational race, or the runners have cajoled friends and colleagues into sponsoring them. Both ways, millions of dollars move from wallets to causes, carried there on runners' feet.

Even races that did not begin as fund-raisers have evolved in that direction. The New York City Marathon began in 1970 with 127 athletes in a quirky run around and around Central Park. By 2008 an astonishing 37,899 people participated in the run through all five boroughs of the city. More to the point, in just that year's marathon they raised $18.2 million for charity.

The point is this: In the subculture of endurance sports, social action has become the norm. It is as ordinary as starting guns and finish lines. Just imagine how American culture would be improved if this norm reached into other parts of society. The idea is spreading, in subtle and diverse ways. There are signs that a growing number of Americans understand the need for renewal of our common purpose.