Eat and Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness

by Scott Jurek

According to Cerutty, “You only ever grow as a human being if you’re outside your comfort zone.” Cerutty recovered (he would live to be eighty years old) and,

That first day, I made three trips up and three trips down as fast as I could. Then I drove home and put in a full shift at work. But the next morning I didn’t want to get out of bed. I could hear music. It was the siren song of a warm bed, a cozy couch, a few hours of reading, or listening to music, or just being. No one was forcing me to run. No one said I had to. No one was going to die if I just relaxed a little. Those were the lyrics of the song. It was the catchy, terrible tune that had seduced so many runners to drop out of races. It was a melody I could not afford to listen to. The song was calling: Rest. You just ran one mountain. No need to do another.

According to bushido, the best mind for the battlefield—or the race—is that of emptiness, or an empty mind.

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.