How Being The Unathletic Kid Became My Ultrarunning Superpower

The Art of Sucking at Sports

I already know what would happen if I were out there: the giggles as I run to the high jump bar, the burning shame as I kick it, the disappointed sigh of the PE teacher as she writes another failure in her notebook. So I sit on the hard wooden bench instead, my gym clothes safely hidden in the back of my closet at home — exactly where I left them on purpose.

I feel safe here, watching Andrea effortlessly clear the bar. Then Claudia. Then Josephine. Each successful jump feels like another reminder of what I can’t do. And while the wooden bench might be hard and uncomfortable, it’s far more comfortable than being out there, seen, judged.

At 14 years old, I had mastered the art of strategic failure — carefully choosing when to “forget” my gym clothes, accepting the automatic failing grade as a lesser punishment than the public humiliation of trying and failing.

It would take me decades to understand that this wasn’t just about sports, that my carefully crafted avoidance wasn’t protecting me — it was teaching me to make myself smaller, to choose invisibility over possibility. Each time I sat on that bench, I was rehearsing a story I’d been told my whole life: that I wasn’t athletic, that I didn’t belong in sports, that…