Feet in the Clouds Quotes

“But most fell-runners I know feel – and dislike – the sport’s pains. Those who persist see them as the price that must be paid for the compensatory pleasures. These include the scenery (doesn’t apply on days with zero visibility), the conversation (doesn’t apply on days when you can’t keep up), the joy of being outdoors in the wilderness (doesn’t apply in foul weather), the joy of making full use of your physical powers (doesn’t apply when you’re having an off-day), and the joy – which applies all the more when the other pleasures don’t – of it all being over, and of being able to share your relief with like-minded people.”
― Richard Askwith, Feet in the Clouds: A Tale of Fell-Running and Obsession

“There are other risks in life apart from the various hazards one encounters in the mountains - and one of those risks is the loss of one's dreams.”
― Richard Askwith, Feet in the Clouds: A Tale of Fell-Running and Obsession

“Above all, if you’re not going to enjoy it, don’t bother. It’s an awful long way, and an awful long time to be miserable.”
― Richard Askwith, Feet in the Clouds: A Tale of Fell-Running and Obsession

“Does it ever bother him, I wonder, that all that effort – all those thousands of hours of merciless self-punishment – has brought him so little material reward? This is, after all, an age in which Britain counts its sporting millionaires by the score. ‘No,’ he says firmly. ‘Once you get big rewards, you get nastiness. This is a wonderful sport, with good sport in it. If someone fell in a race, you’d check they were all right, though you wouldn’t stop unless you absolutely had to – just as, if I fell, I wouldn’t want someone to lose their race because of me. But once there’s money, there’s trouble.”
― Richard Askwith, Feet in the Clouds: A Tale of Fell-Running and Obsession

“It can't be more than a quarter of a mile to the finish, but it seems to go on forever. Do I really have to do this? My legs are entirely dead. Would it really matter if I stopped here?
But I know I'd regret it if I did, so I plod leadenly on, distracting myself...with the thought that, whatever troubles I may have been carrying around in my head before the race, I have now entirely forgotten what they were. This thought is rather refreshing. Whatever physical pains it has involved, this ordeal has utterly absorbed me, forcing my brain to focus on the kind of concerns for which it evolved - navigation, survival, balance, digging deep - rather than on the fretful urban anxieties to which it has become habituated. Reconnecting with your inner animal, I suppose you could call it; and it feels good. Especially when, blissfully, I catch sight of the finish.”
― Richard Askwith, Feet in the Clouds: A Tale of Fell-Running and Obsession