I (still!) have an uncle who had a similar mindset, broke his leg half way through a race and only realised when he stopped at the end, that he couldnt walk any further

finally when they had to (successfully) defib him during a race, that shook him into assessing his health not running for the sake of running

There's a mindset with distance runners that I have seen over and over, just sometimes way too much of a generally good thing