Familiar Sensation

“These long runs, ultra marathons, are surface-level. Beneath this action, these long runs, lie moments of familiar sensation: pain and pleasure.

Pain takes many forms throughout one’s life: it looks like tears, sweat, blood, frowns, arguments, anger, regret. Pleasure is also expressed in variety: it looks like laughs, joy, beauty, stories, excitement, gratitude, love.

A long run, an ultra marathon, carries these same sensations. And they are indistinguishable from the toils of life.

The physical pain and mental torment experienced when one runs fifty miles or one hundred miles is, while most do not realize it, familiar to many people (even those who don’t run!) because life prescribes these things on its own. They are a part of life! Tears, sweat, blood, frowns, arguments, anger, regret, laughs, joy, beauty, stories, excitement, gratitude, and love; this is life.

The pleasure in life and the pain in life are compacted into one event. One long run.

The difference between life and an ultra marathon? Running an ultra marathon beats life to the punch. Life didn’t prescribe the pain, THE RUNNER did. And life didn’t deliver the pleasure; THE RUNNER went and found it!

The runner prescribed the pain. Why?

Mischief

When one lives with an understanding of life’s mischief –the rollercoaster of its pains and joys– he or she becomes mentally prepared for the lows; the pain, tears, blood, sweat, and falls are expected. They are even a part of the strategy. To understand the mischief of life, one must experience it with an open mind.

Many people are rightfully taught to anticipate adversity and treat it as equal to victory; a failure to do so results in low depression during the worst of times and peaks of joy, ready to crash down, during the best of times. Emotional stability is a byproduct of understanding life’s mischief. Life’s mischief can only be understood by those who experience it.”

Are you an ‘emotionally stable’ person? Are your experiences and circumstances strongly linked to your mental state? Emotional stability is essential to moving through life efficiently and effectively. Examining our emotional responses to experiences and circumstances is a good way to look at our own development of ‘mental toughness.’

Experience it.

Beat life to the punch. Do not be a victim to life. Do not wait to be pulled off the precarious cliff. Jump off. Do not fear the dark forest. Run into it. Do not sit idly as life robs you of comfort. Reject comfort.

When you run an ultra marathon, you feel the nature of life in all its mischief, packed into a trail. This experience, the physical exhaustion and mental torment alongside the elation and laughs, gives one a clear understanding of life’s mischief. It necessitates one strategizing around broken blisters, twisted ankles, sickness, severe weather, loneliness. The bad carries you forward to the good, and the good gets you back on the trail.

Life is an ultra marathon.

The Victims

Most are not willing to embrace the fear and adversity; most are not willing to self-prescribe life’s mischief.

Break free from the expectations of others, of culture. Eat this. Drink that. Wear those. Dress like me. Listen to us. Align.