Courage and Light

Check out this ultra edition of Marathon Talk, a UK program. It includes a great interview with Scott Jurek and some helpful information and tips.

Immediately after listening to this, I of course had ultra running on my mind. A coworker brought up a cheesy quote that she had received in an email--something about finding courage and light in your heart. Another coworker pondered, "how does courage lead to finding light?"

I said, "I know!"

"How?" she asked.

"You have to run an ultra to get it," was my response. She is a runner who has said she will "never" run an ultra (never say never!), and last week we had been talking about the appeal of ultras and why I want to run them. So she laughed when she heard this answer. But for me this is really what ultra running is all about, that complex web of things that happen in an ultra: battling pain and fatigue, continuing on no matter what, discovering things about yourself that you did not realize before, finding your greatest physical and mental highs and lows (often within minutes of each other!), and then finally overcoming the course--and in the process, yourself--and then going on to do it all over again.

Obviously there are other ways in which courage is related to light, but this is the most potent for me at the moment, given that I'm tapering! lol In fact, the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that courage and light are inseparable. But maybe that's just me. :)