Image credit Gary, of a refrigerator magnet in a gift shop. Sorry, no info as to the maker! I should have bought it.
The link to Ultrarunning is this: if we--men and women alike--are honest with ourselves, one component of the reason why we are practitioners of this sport is what in the photo above is called "Real Men." I like to call it the smugness factor.
Remember back to your first marathon, when people that you knew told you how they simply could NOT believe that a person could run 26 miles. No way. We smiled and acted all self-deprecating, but inwardly we were hugging ourselves.
Fast forward to the day when you ran your first 50 miler, or later advanced to the point where you ran a 100 miler. The smugness factor went waaaaaay up, and you knew it. And you liked it.
The smugness factor is not why I run vast distances in the backcountry, but in my heart of hearts I know it exists.
(Of course, to be the devil's advocate, "It's not bragging if you can do it.")
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