Even the greatest sometimes just... stop
Why choosing DNF is sometimes the correct choice.
One hundred miles. The most stacked field in the history of the Western States 100. And before mile 62, the two biggest names in ultrarunning had both quit.
Western States is the race every ultrarunner circles on the calendar. Kilian Jornet stopped around mile 38. Jim Walmsley pulled out just before Foresthill. No finish line photos. No comeback montage. Two of the greatest endurance athletes alive looked at the day, listened to their bodies, and walked off the course.
In ultrarunning those three letters, DNF, Did Not Finish, carry more dread than the pain itself. Runners will hobble, crawl, and hallucinate to avoid them. I know, because I once chose the other door. Chicago, 2016. My tibia cracked at mile six and I refused to stop. I limped twenty miles to the finish, called it heart, and woke up in a hospital bed. The MRI called it a fractured leg, and the doctor was not sure I would race again. The brave-looking choice cost me three years.
So when the two best in the world quit the same race, I did not see weakness. I saw the math I had failed to do. Their fitness did not quit that day. Their judgment showed up. The race is one day. The sport is a life. A DNF is not surrender. It is a decision about which race you are actually running.
When it gets real
In the last days of July, one of the sharpest minds in AI made the same move. Lilian Weng, OpenAI safety veteran and co founder of Thinking Machines Lab, resigned. No spin. She wrote that she had been sicker in the past seven months than ever in her life.
“I don’t feel I’m able to continue at the pace a startup requires.” Lilian Weng
One of the most credentialed builders in the hottest industry on earth did the math and stopped. Then she returned to OpenAI in a role she can sustain. She did not leave the sport. She changed races.
Founders treat stopping as identity death, and argue with their bodies until the tibia cracks. But a DNF is information, not identity: pace exceeded capacity. You can ignore the data and break, or read it and come back to the start line whole.
Worth your time
Read Endure by Alex Hutchinson, a physicist who ran for Canada’s national team and then spent a decade asking where human limits actually live. His answer: mostly in the brain, and they are elastic. It is the smartest book I know on when to push through the wall, and when the wall is telling you the truth.
Final thoughts
Jornet will race again. Walmsley will race again. Weng is already back at work. The only athlete who never recovers is the one who cannot tell the race from the life. I could not, once, and it cost me three years I will never get back. The finish line is replaceable. The runner is not.
Which race in your life is worth a DNF?
Thanks for reading.
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