I wonder if this is due to a lower rate of coaching. I don’t have a ton of first hand knowledge but most other endurance sports the athletes usually come up through well organized teams. Maybe the lack of organization (which is great for other reasons) leads to less coaching and therefore missing someone to tell you to rest and recover before you go over the edge.
If you want to try your hand at powerlifting as an amateur, there's plenty of programs and templates with different styles of periodization that will have you doing micro- and meso-cycles of effort running up to a competition (or just testing your maxes in the gym).
I'd figure similar programs exist for traditional athletics. I guess much of the issue is the boundary between amateur and pro; most casual lifters in the gym have no hopes or business trying to compete in bodybuilding, powerlifting or strongman.
The article addresses this:
> That’s not to say that athletes in other sports aren’t working hard. They are. But they typically do so within a team environment or under the direction of a professional coach, providing them with well-established frameworks for success. Even though ultrarunning has grown, there’s still little infrastructure to support its competitors. Sponsorships mean full-time careers, but that rarely includes coaching.