Always assume incompetence before looking for conspiracy.
If it comes easy, if it doesn’t require extraordinary effort, you’re not pushing hard enough. It’s supposed to hurt like hell.
I eat nothing that's processed or refined - no high-fructose corn syrup, no sugar, no trans-fats. I eat a lot of fish and monounsaturated fats from olives, olive oil and nuts. A lot of organic, fresh fruits and vegetables. No bread. No gluten. No wheat. No rice.
A lot of ultramarathoners are soloists. They're single and live lives off the grid.
Somewhere along the line we seem to have confused comfort with happiness.
Never, however, do I take shortcuts. There is not path of least resistance in my training. What I do equates to hard manual labor, disciplined grunt work. Once you permit yourself to compromise, you fail yourself. You might be able to fool some people, but you can never fool yourself. Your toughest critic is the one you face every morning in the mirror.
For me, as for so many runners, there really are no finish lines. Runs end; running doesn't.
There's always this assumption that you're going to get everything right immediately. And any professional understands that that's just not so.
We rely upon the poets, the philosophers, and the playwrights to articulate what most of us can only feel, in joy or sorrow. They illuminate the thoughts for which we only grope; they give us the strength and balm we cannot find in ourselves. Whenever I feel my courage wavering, I rush to them. They give me the wisdom of acceptance, the will and resiliance to push on.
Government schools, with your tax money, now discourage the teaching of multiplication tables by rote memorization but teach reading by the 'look-and-say' method which is memorization of spelling patterns. In doing so, they ensure that children will neither be able to read nor calculate.
In this very breath that we take now lies the secret that all great teachers try to tell us.