Moving around nurtures a mindset of reflection. As I look back on thirty years of life I realize that I spend a lot of time questioning the choices I have made, often doubting myself. Analyzing life as if from a comfortable seat on a jumbo jet 35000 feet in the air. I should have studied biology! I should have moved to denver! I should have quit my job long ago, Ive wasted so much time! It's easy to get carried away or lost in the moment of reflection and to forget the realities that surround us. We live in an era where the perception is that we have every option that we could follow whenever we want. This is seen as a positive development but leads to a kind of paralysis, a developmental immaturity. There are many trails you can take from where you are but you never leave because you are too afraid that a little ways up one trail you will be missing something better in another direction. This kind of thinking is useless. It's better to choose a path and make the most of whatever we find on that path than to spend our time wondering what could have been. In the last ten years i chose a path with sacrifices both socially and professionally. It's easy to focus on the price of this path and to forget what it was all about. That I wanted to become an athlete who could run the hardest hundred mile trail races. It may seems arrogant to keep focusing on this accomplishment but I have to remind myself that this is what I made choices for which weren't easy.
I WOULD RATHER BE ASHES THAN DUST! I WOULD RATHER THAT MY SPARK SHOULD BURN OUT IN A BRILLIANT BLAZE THAN IT SHOULD BE STIFLED BY DRY-ROT. I WOULD RATHER BE A SUPERB METOR, EVERY ATOM OF ME IN MAGNIFICENT GLOW, THAN A SLEEPY AND PERMANENT PLANET. THE PROPER FUNCTION OF MAN IS TO LIVE. I SHALL NOT WASTE MY DAYS IN TRYING TO PROLONG THEM.
- JACK LONDON
3.14.2015
3.11.2015
THE SKYRUNNER'S MANIFESTO
Kiss or kill. Besa o mata. Kiss glory or die in the attempt. Losing is death; winning is life. The fight is what decides the victory, the winner. How often have rage and pain made you cry? How often has exhaustion made you lose your memory, voice, common sense? And how often in this state have you exclaimed, with a broad smile on your face, "The final stage! Two more hours! Go, onward, upward! That pain only exists inside your head. Control it, destroy it, eliminate it, and keep on. Make your rivals suffer. Kill them" I am selfish right? Sport is selfish, because you must be selfish to know how to fight on while you suffer, to love solitude and hell. Stopping, coughing, feeling cold, not feeling your legs, feeling sick, vomitting, getting headaches, cuts, bleeding...can you think of anything better?
The secret isn't in your legs, but in your strength of mind. You need to go for a run when it is raining, windy, and snowing, when lightning sets trees on fire as you pass them, when snowflakes or hailstones strike your legs and body in the storm and make you weep, and in order to keep running, you have to wipe away the tears to see the stones, walls, or sky. The strength of mind to say no to hours of partying, to good grades, to a pretty girl, to the bedsheets against your face. To put your soul into it, going out into the rain until your legs bleed from cuts when you slip on the mud and fall to the ground, and then to get back on your feet and continue uphill until your legs cry out, "Enough!" and leave you marooned in a storm on the remotest peaks, until you die.
Leggings soaked by snow, driven on by the wind that sticks to your face and freezes your sweat. Feeling the pressure from your legs, the weight of your body bearing down on the metatarsals in your toes, pressure that can shatter rocks, destroy planets, and move continents. Legs suspended in the air, gliding like an eagle, or running faster than a cheetah. Running downhill, slipping on the snow and mude before driving yourself on anew, and suddenly you are free to fly, to shout out in the heart of the mountain, with only the most intrepid rodents and birds hidden in their nests beneath the rocks as your confessors. Only they know your secrets, your fears. Because losing is death. And you should not die before you have given your all, have wept from the pain and the wounds. And you cannot surrender. You must fight on to the death. Because glory is the greatest, and you can either aspire to glory or fall by the wayside. You cannot simply not fight, not suffer, not die...Now is the time to suffer, the time to fight, the time to win. Kiss or kill.
(from Run or Die by Kilian Jornet)
OTHER QUOTES:
a race is a life that is born when you get up in the morning and dies when you cross the finish line
a day comes in life when you have to decide which train to take, and once you are aboard, there is no point in thinking what might have happened if you caught a different one. you have to make the most of what you find on your route. we can never know what the other trains have to offer, even though we lie awake many a night dreaming that they are better. in truth, perfection only exists within us, in what we think is perfect. Each track leads us to a different place, but it is our choices that lead us to find moments of happiness on any particular track.
the decisions we make, however small and insignificant they may seem when we make them, can decide our fate
The secret isn't in your legs, but in your strength of mind. You need to go for a run when it is raining, windy, and snowing, when lightning sets trees on fire as you pass them, when snowflakes or hailstones strike your legs and body in the storm and make you weep, and in order to keep running, you have to wipe away the tears to see the stones, walls, or sky. The strength of mind to say no to hours of partying, to good grades, to a pretty girl, to the bedsheets against your face. To put your soul into it, going out into the rain until your legs bleed from cuts when you slip on the mud and fall to the ground, and then to get back on your feet and continue uphill until your legs cry out, "Enough!" and leave you marooned in a storm on the remotest peaks, until you die.
Leggings soaked by snow, driven on by the wind that sticks to your face and freezes your sweat. Feeling the pressure from your legs, the weight of your body bearing down on the metatarsals in your toes, pressure that can shatter rocks, destroy planets, and move continents. Legs suspended in the air, gliding like an eagle, or running faster than a cheetah. Running downhill, slipping on the snow and mude before driving yourself on anew, and suddenly you are free to fly, to shout out in the heart of the mountain, with only the most intrepid rodents and birds hidden in their nests beneath the rocks as your confessors. Only they know your secrets, your fears. Because losing is death. And you should not die before you have given your all, have wept from the pain and the wounds. And you cannot surrender. You must fight on to the death. Because glory is the greatest, and you can either aspire to glory or fall by the wayside. You cannot simply not fight, not suffer, not die...Now is the time to suffer, the time to fight, the time to win. Kiss or kill.
(from Run or Die by Kilian Jornet)
OTHER QUOTES:
a race is a life that is born when you get up in the morning and dies when you cross the finish line
a day comes in life when you have to decide which train to take, and once you are aboard, there is no point in thinking what might have happened if you caught a different one. you have to make the most of what you find on your route. we can never know what the other trains have to offer, even though we lie awake many a night dreaming that they are better. in truth, perfection only exists within us, in what we think is perfect. Each track leads us to a different place, but it is our choices that lead us to find moments of happiness on any particular track.
the decisions we make, however small and insignificant they may seem when we make them, can decide our fate
3.09.2015
the secret weapon of incessant positivity
in·ces·sant/inˈses(ə)nt
adjective
(of something regarded as unpleasant) continuing without pause or interruption.
adjective
(of something regarded as unpleasant) continuing without pause or interruption.
3.07.2015
The Beauty of a Rare Thing
I like to think that the extended period of intense training required to run 100 miles is a normal part of my life. That the satisfaction from focused training, the time spent in nature, the lower stress, and the improved daily fitness is what I am truly after. It's more of a lifestyle and something that I would do regardless of the existence of racing in order to reap the myriad of benefits from this tremendous effort. I must admit though that the bodies lined up to run 100 miles on race morning are undoubtedly the fittest they will ever be in life. The event is a celebration of this peak physical condition which one experiences briefly.
As I begin to ramp up my training, building up my body from a basic level of fitness to hopefully run 100 miles in the summer, I am struck with how far I have to climb to get back to where I was at. It is an unavoidable fact that the shape my body was in was a unique occurrence which took months and years of consistent effort to reach. We can aspire to reach these peaks but attempting to stay at them is futile. The beauty of this is that it makes those moments and memories even more special. To look back and say 'how did I do that?' And look back even further to a time when you said 'can I do that?'
As I begin to ramp up my training, building up my body from a basic level of fitness to hopefully run 100 miles in the summer, I am struck with how far I have to climb to get back to where I was at. It is an unavoidable fact that the shape my body was in was a unique occurrence which took months and years of consistent effort to reach. We can aspire to reach these peaks but attempting to stay at them is futile. The beauty of this is that it makes those moments and memories even more special. To look back and say 'how did I do that?' And look back even further to a time when you said 'can I do that?'
3.04.2015
Celebrate Good Decisions
The disconnect between decisions we make and the remorse we feel is what causes us to fail. It is the difference between immediate and delayed gratification. The long term positive ramifications of good decisions lie somewhere in the unknown future while the fix we get from bad decisions is tangibly immediate. The remorse I feel about binging on almond butter all day only arrives at 2am while nursing an acidic stomach and is mentally removed from the time I'm standing in the store thinking wether I should buy almond butter because it tastes good and is easy to consume. This is why it is important to celebrate the good decisions you make in the moment. Jump up and down and smile when you leave the store without the box of cookies. Reward yourself mentally.
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