Edison Peña's marathon of endurance

For the trapped Chilean miner dubbed 'the runner' by his colleagues, exercise was not just a survival strategy but life itself
    • theguardian.com,
    • Jump to comments ()
Edison Peña, the Chilean miner called 'the runner'
Edison Peña gestures as he is carried from the San Jose mine, Chile on 13 October 2010, where he and 32 other miners were trapped for two months underground. Peña, dubbed 'the runner' by his mates, has been invited to take part in the New York City marathon. Photograph: AP/Hugo Infante

Part of our fascination with the story of the Chilean miners, successfully rescued this week after 70 days trapped in tunnels 700m below the surface, is our wonder at what it would be like to be in the situation ourselves. The psychological horror of being entombed beneath millions of tons of rock – how would we cope with the stress and anxiety, the fear of death, the exquisite torture of terror and boredom, the waiting, the physical privations? We want to know: would we fold and break down, or would we, too, have the strength to get through the experience and emerge into the daylight, our minds and bodies intact?

Now, I, for one, have my answer. I would do as Edison Peña did, and if I could follow his example, I think I could survive. What Edison did was run.

His response to the miners' imprisonment was to go running, every day, anything from 5 to 10km in the tunnels and chambers where they were trapped. Even in the heat, with uneven surfaces and improvised footwear, nothing deterred him: he kept to his exercise routine, religiously. Eventually, rescuers were able to send down a pair of trainers to replace the cut-down miners' boots he was running in and which were wrecking his feet with blisters and sores. He even got an iPod, so that he could listen to Elvis Presley as he ran.

Paradoxically, Peña was one of those miners whose mental state medical staff above were initially most worried about: his anger and frustration at their predicament were evident. But this may only go to show how little the psychologists understood about the mentality of the type they were dealing with: any triathlete would be furious at having their training programme messed up by an external event (such as a mining disaster)!

Exercise addicts – like Edison, like me, like a thousand others I see daily pounding the pavement in Manhattan (where Edison has now been invited to take part in the upcoming marathon) – need to get our fitness fix: it's essential to how we feel about ourselves, how we structure our daily existence and our lives over time. It is always a coping mechanism of sorts, self-medication to deal with stress, and a means of giving oneself a sense of control over oneself, especially because one cannot control one's environment and life events.

And, not least, as Peña rightly says, it is a way of channelling anger, diverting aggression into a form of compulsive, yet ultimately positive behaviour. Finally, it's vital "me-time": it's impossible for Edison to say, but I'd be surprised if he didn't feel this – that (I would guess) part of the hell of being trapped underground for weeks on end would be the hell of being trapped with the same group of people day in, day out, for interminable hours. However powerful the bond forged between the miners, running would be a temporary respite and escape from the enforced sociability of the situation.

The endorphin "buzz" is good; the sense of wellbeing and healthiness; frankly, the sense of satisfaction and even superiority one gets from being fit… they are all part of it. But a runner like Peña cannot not run – even when his feet were a bloody mess. You have to run because to stay still would be to admit defeat, which is a prequel to death. If you live to run, the deal is that you have to run to live.

How the others coped, what inner sources of strength they drew on to endure their ordeal, I can only guess at. But Edison Peña I feel I know a little. He's one of us. Thank you for your example, Edison. And many a mile may you run in your new-found freedom.

Latest posts

Today's best video

Today in pictures