Pomp and Fury: The 24 Hours of Le Mans
Held annually during the long days and short nights of June, the 24 Hours of Le Mans is the world’s oldest active endurance race. It was immortalized by the late, great Steve McQueen in the film Le Mans. Not a word of dialogue was spoken during the first 37 minutes of the movie, and while it has since become a cult classic, it was, not shockingly, a box office success. Not even the ‘King of Cool’ could save his beloved pet project. He never raced again. But something about LeMans captured his imagination to the point where he was willing to throw it all away.
The difference between an endurance race and a more traditional fixed-distance race (like an F1 race) is that an endurance race is about how much ground you can cover over a period of time; a fixed distance race is about how quickly you can complete the set distance. Endurance races are not just about speed, they’re about durability. During Le Mans, teams have, well, 24 hours to cover as much ground as possible, with a team made up of three drivers, and each driver is required to take a break every six hours (though they often change more often).
An F1 race covers about 190 miles (44 to 78 laps). Drivers race for about 90 minutes. During Le Mans, each team of drivers covers approximately 3,200 miles (380 laps) at an average speed of 145 mph. That’s like driving from New York to California in less than a day. Or Rome to Moscow and then almost back to Rome.
I have been casually obsessed with La Mans for a long time, likely because I am obsessed with what it means to me to be tough — mostly because I’m not, not exactly – more like a ‘work-in-progress’. But this year I finally made it to the race.
Arriving at the track, I found a wild spectacle of pomp and fury. There were live concerts, 68 restaurants, and more than 800,000 square feet of temporary structures built to support the event and its crowds. At 92 euros for a general admission ticket, it's still relatively accessible, though there is also a ‘Gold Experience’, priced around 7,000 euros, which includes access to the paddocks, a Porsche Hot Lap around the track, and then a helicopter ride over it. Rolex is a sponsor, and Zidane was there, along with the French military, showcasing their new drone program as part of the opening ceremony. The event is a monster, it costs a gajillion dollars to organize, but I didn't really care about any of that —no more than I cared about who won the race. Because this event is not about the race. The race was conceived as a test of endurance, a measure of toughness.
I recently read a book called Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage. If you’re not familiar with the story: An expedition, led by Sir Ernest Shackleton, attempted to cross Antarctica by land. The attempt failed, but in doing so became what is considered to be one of the most impressive navigational and survival feats in history. In January 1915, about a month and a half after setting sail from England, Endurance, along with her crew of 28 men, got stuck in pack ice in the Weddell Sea. After eight months of continuous pressure from the ice, the ship was crushed. Shackleton and his men spent the next five months camped out on drifting, melting ice floes, hopping around from one sinking floe to another, like the frog in that Frogger video game, waiting for the ice to open up enough for them to sail. Once it did, they sailed three small open ships (none more than 25 feet long) for about 100 miles to Elephant Island. This took seven days. It was the first time in 497 days they had been on land. No rest for the weary though. Their location was so remote, so removed from any known trade routes, that they realized if they were to survive they would need to save themselves. The six strongest men set sail in a 22-and-a-half foot uncovered, modestly modified lifeboat, its wood painted with seal blood to make it semi-water resistant. They sailed for 17 days in the winter, covering 800 miles through the Southern Ocean, a cold and wildly treacherous body of water where waves reached the height of a six-story building. The sailors were wearing only wool (which isn’t waterproof), so they were very wet, and very cold, as they rowed with frostbitten hands encased in frozen gloves, chopping away at the 14-inch-thick ice building up around the boat. They did this without any sleep for the duration of the voyage.
Somehow, navigating using only a sextant and four brief sightings of the sun, they arrived. Once at South Georgia Island, they had to improvise the first land crossing of the hostile terrain’s interior: a 32-mile, 36-hour trek (still no sleep) to find the whaling station, without a map. Once they arrived, they sought to make themselves presentable — as, of course, a gentleman should.
Miraculously, everyone survived.
The journey has yet to be replicated.
My first thoughts after finishing this book were to wonder how we got from there to here, where we are now. Who are our champions, whose stories do we tell, whose trophies are on our collective mantles? Today, we give trophies for participation, and there’s a growing movement to eliminate teaching penmanship. I understand that learning penmanship in a hyper-digital age requires a bit more effort, but wouldn't a bit more result in us being a bit more? I don’t know about you, but if my dick were a bit bigger and my shoulders a bit wider, I might be running for president rather than writing this stupid love letter to effort. So let Billy struggle with his handwriting, we’ll need someone with this skill set when the singularity is achieved.
But then I thought about how we (humans) also did that. Several humans successfully sailed that tiny open boat through those sketchy waters to safety.
Endurance is a measure of toughness, and toughness is a measure of a material's ability to withstand rupture. I began to wonder how much more we could achieve, or where we might be — socially, economically, culturally, politically, romantically — if we would just endure a bit more discomfort before rupturing. I read somewhere…a commitment to effort rather than indulgence. Conversations with those who are different, reading stories that challenge us, or writing stories that change the world, consuming less and engaging the so-called ‘other’ with humility…. What would that place look like?
I've been talking to my teenage son about how everything good lies on the other side of effort — when I’m not reprimanding him for using TikTok as his primary source of information. These conversations are related, because, as someone wrote: Fantasy allows you to forsake the indignity of effort. This is something that my son seems to be embracing: fantasy. But, I've assured him that pushing through and then beyond the point you want to quit is where you actually find joy, and meaning, and confidence, and belief, which motivates, which spurs joy, and so on.
Modern life has made it really easy to not dig in. There are so many (really good) distractions, there is so much to consume, the totality of human knowledge and achievement, accessible from your back pocket. But, (I assure him) the discipline to resist to the degree to which you can endure (I promise) is where you find the thing that we are all so desperately looking for.
I know this, because as a kid I felt so fragile. I was. I would have these horrible tantrums. A modest slight would send me reeling. A rupture. But I’ve worked hard to overcome these anxious, inadequate feelings. Toughness, its essence, is not just doing ridiculous or dangerous things. It is learning how to resist in the context of durability, to perform under extreme duress, to be of service to the thing that you’re committed to, whether that is your family, your community, or a race — at all costs and against all odds, to continue moving forward while your head screams “No! Run away!”
This is what Le Mans is, really. It’s so hard, it’s so uncomfortable. It’s painful, it’s dangerous. But the joy you feel as a result of pushing yourself beyond boundaries and imagined limitations — that is what’s waiting on the other side. For all of us.
