There's a great post I read on twitter on how marathons and Iron Man have come to be the new status signal. The argument was that people who grew up with privileges find it hard to show something they've personally worked for. Every other "achievement" could be attributed to something other than their hard work.

ex: getting a big seed round from a VC for your start up still may show that your parents had connections.

but marathons have this grindability and somewhat stable feedback loop.

EDIT: https://x.com/aporia9n/status/2085413571568222443