Be your own "Peaceful Warrior!"

When I was running with my friend Mike at my race last weekend he told me about this book called, "Way of the Peaceful Warrior." As he started to talk about it and give me some quotes from the book it really made me think. The one question I always get from people when I tell them how far I run, besides "why?" is, "what do you think about while you are running?"

When it comes to ultra marathons, it's best to leave your watch at home because the more you think about how long you are going to be out there, the easier it is for your mind to talk you out of running. I'm blessed to have a very good inner strength but it's something that we all have within us. Many of us fight it, though, and allow our sub-conscious to talk us out of doing things. During those long winter months of training I would have incredible battles with my mind about quitting. It would have been so easy to pack it in and live to run another day but then I would have been giving in to those negative thoughts and it would have made me miserable for the rest of the day.

Building an inner strength or spirit takes time and patience. You must not allow anything to come between you and your goals. You must realize that some sacrifices will have to be made in order for you to actualize these goals. Surrounding yourself with people who share your same interest or passion can go a long way to helping you stay mentally strong. There will be people who will try to sabotage your efforts and they may the people who are most close to you. My take on that is that if they really knew you, they would support your efforts. I don't have time for people who are negative or who fail to see the importance that running is to me. At times that has meant saying goodbye to people but I know that in the long run I have increased my inner strength.

Running, just by its nature, will increase your mind, body and spirit. Unlike any other sport that I've been involved in, there really is no limit to what you can do. I once thought that I would never attempt a run longer than a marathon and now I'm about to do a race which is 4 marathons in a row on one single day. I've already exceeded my expectations with running a 50 Mile race but I know how driven I am and I'm not someone who is afraid of challenging myself.

Here are some incredible quotes from the Way of the Peaceful Warrior

"When you begin your transcendental training, focusing your best efforts, without attachment to outcomes, you will understand the peaceful warrior's way."



It may be true that the unexamined life is not worth living-but neither is the unlived life worth examining.


Wake up! If you knew for certain you had a terminal illness--if you had little time left to live--you would waste precious little of it! Well, I'm telling you...you do have a terminal illness: It's called birth. You don't have more than a few years left. No one does! So be happy now, without reason--or you will never be at all.

If you don't get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don't want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can't hold on to it forever. Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is a law, and no amount of pretending will alter that reality.

Pain is a relatively objective, physical phenomenon; suffering is our psychological resistance to what happens. Events may create physical pain, but they do not in themselves create suffering. Resistance creates suffering. Stress happens when your mind resists what is...The only problem in your life is your mind's resistance to life as it unfolds.