Overcoming the difficulties of an ultramarathon reminds me that I can overcome the difficulties of life.
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.
Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food. – HIPPOCRATES.
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.
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.
The more you know, the less you need. – YVON CHOUINARD.
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.
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.
But you can be transformed. Not overnight, but over time. Life is not a race.
In the case of pain, perhaps the one we know hurts us less than the one we fear.
Running efficiently demands good technique, and running efficiently for 100 miles demands great technique.
Don’t work towards freedom, but allow the work itself to be freedom. – DOGEN ROSHI.
Perspective can be both humbling and inspiring.
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.
Our existence is always like this: the same but different, light then dark, found now lost, here and there and back again.
Not all pain is significant.
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.
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.
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.
It was just numbers. I knew I could outrun numbers.
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.