I’m convinced that a lot of people run ultramarathons for the same reason they take mood-altering drugs. I don’t mean to minimize the gifts of friendship, achievement, and closeness to nature that I’ve received in my running carer. But the longer and farther I ran, the more I realized that what I was often chasing was a state of mind – a place where worries that seemed monumental melted away, where the beauty and timelessness of the universe, of the present moment, came into sharp focus.

— Scott Jurek

Scott Jurek Quotes

Running efficiently demands good technique, and running efficiently for 100 miles demands great technique. But the wonderful paradox of running is that getting started requires no technique. None at all. If you want to become a runner, get onto a trail, into the woods, or on a sidewalk or street and run. Go 50 yards if that’s all you can handle. Tomorrow, you can go farther.

— Scott Jurek

Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food. – HIPPOCRATES.

— Scott Jurek

Altogether, our modern inclination toward sloth, the easy availability of processed food, and the prevalence of life-saving medical treatments have made us a long-lived, unhealthy people.

— Scott Jurek

Let’s improve ourselves as human beings, let’s become more compassionate, let’s become bigger, let’s become stronger, let’s become nicer people.

— Scott Jurek

The more you know, the less you need. – YVON CHOUINARD.

— Scott Jurek

That’s one of the many great pleasures of an ultra-marathon. You can hurt more than you ever thought possible, then continue until you discover that hurting isn’t that big a deal.

— Scott Jurek

Random thinking is the enemy of the ultramarathoner. Thinking is best used for the primitive essentials: when I ate last, the distance to the next aid station, the location of the competition, my pace. Other than those considerations, the key is to become immersed in the present moment where nothing else matters.

— Scott Jurek

But you can be transformed. Not overnight, but over time. Life is not a race.

— Scott Jurek

In the case of pain, perhaps the one we know hurts us less than the one we fear.

— Scott Jurek

Running efficiently demands good technique, and running efficiently for 100 miles demands great technique.

— Scott Jurek

Don’t work towards freedom, but allow the work itself to be freedom. – DOGEN ROSHI.

— Scott Jurek

Perspective can be both humbling and inspiring.

— Scott Jurek

To run 100 miles and more is to bring the body to the point of breaking, to bring the mind to the point of destruction, to arrive at that place where you can alter your consciousness.

— Scott Jurek

Our existence is always like this: the same but different, light then dark, found now lost, here and there and back again.

— Scott Jurek

Not all pain is significant.

— Scott Jurek

We often think we can’t go any farther and feel like we have nothing left to give, yet there is a hidden potential and strength in all of us, begging us to find it.

— Scott Jurek

Out there in the wild, on a long journey, you hike your own hike, blaze your own trail, and only you can find what you’re looking for.

— Scott Jurek

The question became less and less theoretical in Vermont, where I started to come up against my own limits. I’ve heard it said that ultra marathons are 90 percent mental. And the other 10 percent? That’s mental too. I was in the thick of that other 10 percent.

— Scott Jurek

It was just numbers. I knew I could outrun numbers.

— Scott Jurek

According to bushido, the best mind for the battlefield – or the race – is that of emptiness, or an empty mind. This doesn’t mean sleepiness or inattention; the bushido concept of emptiness is more like that rush of surprise and expansiveness you get under an ice-cold waterfall. The empty mind is a dominant mind. It can draw other minds into its rhythm, the way a vacuum sucks up dirt or the way the person on the bottom of a seesaw controls the person on the top.

— Scott Jurek
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