Thursday, July 19, 2012

Running an Ultra This Fall?

Back in Jan 2010 when I was 2 months away from toeing the line at the Umstead 100 Mile Endurance Race, I posted about the need to commit and embrace the challenge.

Well, it's late July and if you are running an ultra this fall--be it 50K, 50 miles, 100K, or 100 miles--right now is pretty much do or die time.  Either you are in or you are out, and the watershed moment facing you is that of commitment.

Here's what I wrote back then, and the words are pretty relevant today for a fall event:

The race is in 2 months. That sounds like a decent interval from now, but then when I think of it instead as being 8 weeks away, suddenly I feel a great sense of urgency. At any rate, I am now formally committed. Before--when I was on the wait list--I kept up my training but it had an air of unreality, that I was just going through the motions, that in the end I may have invested a lot of training effort, only to be told, sorry, maybe next year. But now I'm Committed with a capital C.

As usual, whenever I think about inspiration I turn to other people who have already said something better, stronger, more succinctly, etc., and a quote attributed to Goethe comes to mind, one that I once had posted on my desk:
Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.


In the immortal words of Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the starship Enterprise:

  Make it so.



 

 

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