To the extent men define each other in terms of their physical abilities, it's essential to the establishment of guy-cred to demonstrate some level of strength, speed, coordination or reflex — the lack of which will directly result in a lifetime of melvins, noogies and/or stolen lunch money.

You don't necessarily have to bench 200, count the stripes on a zebra finch at 30 yards or sprint a 40 in four blinks. But to earn a seat at the Big Boy Table, you'd better have something to hang your Y chromosomes on, be it a wicked crossover, a resilient liver, or the fastest thumbs in your online "Halo 2" group.

Thankfully, in the absence of such graces, there is a fallback: an advanced capacity for suffering.

I grew up on a typical American diet of backyard baseball, pickup basketball and playground football, despite having the athleticism of Niles Crane and the skill set of Uwe Blab. I played soccer in high school, too, though I was more likely to shank it like Scott Norwood than bend it like Beckham.

I eventually found my niche with marathoning, a sport that, at the recreational level at least, is perfectly suited for people like me who own nary a fast-twitch fiber and whose idea of strategy is "keep running until someone tells you to stop."

The notion that prolonged suffering could equal athletic accomplishment was a revelation, and I applied what I'd learned to cycling, swimming, climbing and other activities that confused stubbornness with achievement.

In such arenas, the very lack of natural ability can have a strangely ennobling effect. It's easy to appreciate a guy like Robert Cheruiyot, who won this year's Boston Marathon in 2 hours, 7 minutes and 14 seconds. But what about those Honolulu Marathoners who cross the line at 15 hours? Now that's heroic.

Among my small circle of climbing friends, I've achieved a sort of minor celebrity not for ascending really big mountains, but for doing so in a state of sustained misery. As my friend George (who has seen me crawl pale, pathetic and puke-stained into tents after 18-hour days) says with chuckling admiration, "You have no business up there!"

It's a dubious trait, to be sure, but there is something in the notion of endurance that appeals to the male values of perseverance and stoicism.

Homer's Odysseus may have been a skilled warrior and sailor, but what was the Odyssey itself but a 10-year test of endurance (albeit one with timely breaks for scarfing lamb and bedding hot witches)?

And nobody ever gave Odysseus a melvin.

Reach Michael Tsai at mtsai@honoluluadvertiser.com.