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Recent success? Yesterday means nothing. Recent failure? Yesterday means nothing. Yesterday means NOTHING.
Give all you have to today. Worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.
Since that first marathon, I have competed in ultramarathons and when in peak shape just prior to bow season, I run at least twenty miles a day.
I am not blessed with insane talent. My secret is time. And I’ve been grinding for years to get where I am at.
“You have to wonder at times what you’re doing out there. Over the years, I’ve given myself a thousand reasons to keep running, but it always comes back to where it started. It comes down to self-satisfaction and a sense of achievement.” —Steve Prefontaine
“The adventure is always and everywhere a passage beyond the veil of the known into the unknown; the powers that watch at the boundary are dangerous; to deal with them is risky; yet for anyone with
competence and courage the danger fades.”
At sixty-two years old, he was no doubt in his prime.
They are very difficult, and there are many mini-mental battles that go on over the course of a race or a hunt.
Mountain hunting had made me tough, and that helped me on the runs. The runs made me tough in another way, and that helped me in the mountains.
Nobody’s going to judge you if you quit a hunt; most people fail on a hunt. The same goes for an ultramarathon.
“It’s all mental.” I say this all the time, and it’s true. If you believe you can do it, you can. We all have virtually limitless potential. Our bodies are capable of so much more than what we ask of them. Take off the mental handcuffs, get out there, and start on your way today.
I am thankful bowhunting allows me to be the provider I was born to be.
pace. I was running a little slower than I normally start, but then again, I always start too fast, blow up, and find myself scratching, clawing, and hurting like hell just to finish. I am not a smart marathoner.
“Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever.”
God, why couldn’t I have been an Olympic athlete? Why couldn’t I have had that kind of talent?
“I believe that the mind powers the body, and once the mind says we want to do it, then the body will follow.”
“We admire the man who embodies victorious effort; the man who never wrongs his neighbor, who is prompt to help a friend, but who has those virile qualities necessary to win in the stern strife of actual life.”
“How are you feeling?” I asked as we steadily moved together. “I’m fucking dying!” Lance said. Thank God, I thought, because I’m dying too, but this gives me hope. Misery loves company.
“Cry in training, laugh in battle.”
“I’m not happy if I’m not doing some physical suffering, like going out on a bike ride or running,” Lance told Time magazine. “First, it’s good for you. Number two, it sort of clears my mind on a daily basis. And it’s a job. My job is to suffer. I make the suffering in training hard so that the races are not full of suffering.”
What sets me apart is my ability to suffer. I love every minute of bowhunting, but I have yet to be on an easy
backcountry bowhunt. So I train like a professional athlete. I train to bleed.
“The gods of the valley are not the gods of the hills, and you shall understand
Getting out of your comfort zone and finding out what you are really capable of is almost an awakening of sorts.
The satanic alarm snapped me out of a deep, deep sleep.
“To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.”
The aid station looked like an infirmary.
No matter how bad things are going, smiling always helps.
the Bighorn Mountains could not be conquered by a mere human being on foot. That shoe-sucking mud and thigh-deep snow banks, and steep climbs that sometimes felt as if they would never end, were things that at best could be fought only to a draw, and even then only with luck. And that as tough as you think you are, there is always somebody tougher and faster, and that the course itself, in the end, would always be tougher still.” No matter how tough I might think I am, I know the mountains will always be tougher. The mountain will always have the upper hand.
“It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.”
In an email before the race, she advised RFP—Relentless Forward Progress.
But I knew all too well that adversity and shattered dreams were great teachers.
The lesson I learned was even when you feel like you’re done, you’re not done. Endurance means you’re never done. The passion you hold inside will always be there, whether it’s boiling through your veins or buried deep in your heart. To endure means to never end, to know the journey is long, to bear with the long days and weeks and sometimes even years. The miles mean something, each step means something. Life is all about endurance and forging on even when you’re beaten down.
“It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.” —Emiliano Zapata Words can be fuel, and phrases can become fire. Some inspire me to go out on my feet fighting, working, digging deep for all I am worth, not on my knees bowing down to physical weakness, life’s setbacks, discomfort, or fear.
With ultramarathons, I know I will be miserable. No doubt. But I’ve found that I can handle misery. My good friend Misery and I have become real close over the years.
I’ve also found that your body will respond and adapt to almost any challenge you put before it. I have learned this in the mountains on long hunts, on the race course, and in training in the blistering heat or in the driving rain.
Our bodies are capable of amazing things if we take off the shackles of doubt, toughen up, sacrifice, and dig deep. Ou...
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Damn the conventional wisdom from skeptics and experts and morons.
“I simply can’t give a half-ass, average effort to anything I’m passionate about. I gotta go hard and give all I got.”
Because what’s worse than unfulfilled potential?
Have you ever just stopped and asked yourself in what ways the world is better because you are in it? How are you impacting the people and places around you? What is your influence? What will they say at your funeral? How will you be remembered?
Strength and courage. They inspire people. Physical strength and bravery in the heat of battle. But even the physically weakest individuals can exhibit these traits.
We love to see when people persevere.
He watched TV; I watched him. His knee was bleeding pretty good from sliding into a base. I remember sitting there staring at the bloody wound, mesmerized by his seeming invincibility.”
“If helping others realizing their dreams and enriching lives isn’t the true definition of success, I don’t know what is. My dad’s life proves to me that strength of character is a lot more important than worldly riches.”
Ideally, when leaving for a tough hunt, a guy wants everything in order, to be focused on the challenging task at hand, having a heightened sense of things.
But my dad dying was the worst heartache I had ever felt. Honoring him was what gave me strength when I was at my weakest.
Unachieved goals don’t have to result in unused gifts.
“I refuse to give my physical pain any value,” Courtney told Zach Davis of TheTrek.com . “I shove the pain aside, focus on something different, and force myself to keep moving … I keep repeating over in my head, ‘Keep moving. Keep moving. Keep moving.’ Or sometimes it’s, ‘You’re fine. You’re fine. You’re fine.’ If I’m being nice to myself, sometimes I will cheer myself on and repeat, ‘You’re doing a good job. You’re doing a good job. You’re doing a good job.’”
