Over the past decade, the average time it takes to finish a marathon has increased. Why? Think about the people around you – chances are there’s someone currently training for a race. Marathons have grown massively in popularity, attracting a broader and more diverse, and let’s face it, slower group of participants rather than only pro athletes, including Harry Styles and Haruki Murakami, who recently had a lovely chat about it.

Among the runners increasingly crowding the starting line is a group recently dubbed “wellness anarchists”. The term, coined by strategist Tom Garland, describes a cohort mostly in their 20s and 30s who train hard but reject the puritan rules of the wellness industry. They proudly broadcast their STRAVA reports and compete in endurance sports, yet happily follow it with a beer or a cigarette. One week it is a marathon that sends their heart rate soaring. Next it is hard techno until sunrise. Health matters, but optimisation does not run their lives.

This is not a novel subculture appearing out of nowhere. The waves of extreme health discipline followed by intense hedonism – this binary logic is embedded in the contemporary neoliberal mindset.

On the one hand, there’s what philosopher Michel Foucault described as “technologies of the self” – we have internalised being our own watchdogs, monitoring, disciplining and optimising our bodies and lives while striving for constant self-improvement. Think Oura rings and obsession over hitting daily protein goals.

On the other hand, the same neoliberal system constantly encourages consumption and pleasure-seeking. Consumption becomes part of identity construction. Sociologist Anthony Giddens called it the “reflexive project of the self” – we continuously shape who we are through lifestyle choices, including what we buy and what hobbies we pursue. A recent Highsnobiety report shows 70% of consumers treat groceries as a form of lifestyle expression.

The combination of these two sides is a relentless cycle between rigid discipline and intense indulgence. Dieting, marathon training and biohacking on one side. Cheat meals, partying and binge behaviour on the other.

This dichotomy is well illustrated by our feeds, where mukbang videos or Crumbl hauls appear in the same infinite scroll as workout routines.

Sociologist Julie Guthman describes this as a central paradox of neoliberal culture: it promotes overconsumption while simultaneously demanding strict bodily discipline. People are encouraged to indulge in the market yet judged if they fail to maintain health, fitness or thinness.

So running a marathon in the morning and heading to the club at night are two expressions of the same project: managing and narrating the self in a culture that demands both optimisation and enjoyment.

So what does this mean for brands? Not an invitation to slap a beer in an athlete’s hand and capitalise on this binary, but rather to alleviate this constant tension. People are exhausted by all-or-nothing thinking. The brands that will resonate are the ones giving people a chance to opt out of the duality altogether, to be more balanced, mindful and less self-demanding.