Other peoples blogs…
Okay, I admit, I enjoy reading other peoples blogs. Maybe it’s the voyeur in me…or maybe its because sometimes I come across little nuggets of virtual gold. It might be a sentence, it might be a paragraph, but it’s a little piece of wisdom gained. What’s that people way? Better to learn from others mistakes than make them yourself.
Just recently, I ran across Donald at www.RunningandRambling.com. Lucky him, he’s currently training for the Western States 100 and in preparation, last weekend, he ran the Mt. Diable 50 miler. In reading his race report, his last couple paragraphs are great:
For the most part, being able to spend an entire day running around on a mountain is a better time than most can dream of. Especially considering that most of these challenges take place in the most beautiful locations in the world, it’s a privilege to merely participate. There are countless people who would love to have the time, determination, ability, and resources to do the same. Truthfully, we have it better than the best - and I think that’s precisely how we pull on through.
Whatever tears at us, whatever holds us down or batters our bodies or bruises our spirit – those are the things we actively seek, if for no other reason than because we hope to be fortunate enough to find them. And when that is our mindset, all those hours on the trail aren’t primarily about trying to tick away the miles as quickly as possible (although make no mistake, I’ll always prefer to go faster. I may be Zen, but I’m not a masochist.) Rather, they are about simply enjoying each mile as it comes, and realizing that - as I wrote in the last post - each and every step of the journey is the journey.
Besides the sentence about being zen, which made me laugh out loud, the whole things speaks well of the pleasures of being out on the trail.
So thanks Donald, and all you other people out there in on the internet. See ya out there…I’ll be the masochist going really slow.
