Are we all born to run.......?

I am currently pondering why it is that we train, or rather that athletes do what they do, and I do not consider myself an athlete.  I am reading numerous books, at the same time ranging from how to train for outdoor sports; to how to climb 5.12 routes (why I have no idea); I have just finished a handbook on the West Buttress of Mount McKinley; and am moving on to Discovering Denali; I also realise I need techniques in Ice if we are to conquer Denali at all and then there is the personal stuff Straight Talk, No Chaser, as it appears I have no clue when it comes to such matters and this is besides the Women’s Health, Shape and Bicycling SA magazines littered around the house.

A thought however has crept into my mind as a result of one of these renditions, Born to Run, Christopher McDougal.  If you have read it, or are halfway through like me you will know that it is a book about the mystic secrets of the fleet-footed Tarahumara Indians or Raramuri, the Running People.  The book talks of all types of Ultrarunner legends as well as those who have backed these runners, one of these being Coach Joe Vigil who spent a lot of time trying to find the answer to the Tarahumara’s ‘success’.

‘Such a sense of joy! marvelled Coach Vigil’.  ‘Glee and determination are usually antagonistic emotions, yet the Tarahumara were brimming with both at once’.  ‘That’s it! Vigil thought.’

It was about character.  ‘Vigil’s notion of character wasn’t toughness.  It was compassion.  Kindness.  Love.  This is the real secret of the Running People, they hadn’t forgotten what it felt like to love running.’  Paraphrased from Born to Run.

Does this mean that attempting and achieving something totally extreme is more about your character than about how hard you train, who your coach is, what you eat and drink before, during and after?

Obviously you need to put in the hours and feed and hydrate your body but do you have to do this because you HAVE to if you want to win/get to the end or because you absolutely love every minute of it. 

It is more to do with where you “practice abundance by giving back, improve interpersonal relationships and show integrity to your value system, eat as though you were a poor person – all posted on the wall of Coach Vigils office, his mini-Tarahumara world.”

Or where pain actually becomes your driving force and without it you have not reached peak performance for that day, ‘Make friends with pain, and you will never be alone. Ken Chlouber, Colorado miner and creator of the Leadville Trail 100’.

Scott Jurek an infamous ultrarunner stumbled upon the answer to making pain and fatigue your friend during the Badwater Ultramarathon “instead of cringing from fatigue, you embrace it.  You refuse to let it go.  You get to know it so well, you’re not afraid of it anymore.  Lisa Smith-Batchen, an ultrarunner from Idaho talks about exhaustion as if it’s a playful pet.  ‘love the beast.  Look forward to it.  Once the Beast arrives she knew it was time to get down to work.  You can’t hate the Beast and expect to beat it, the only way to conquer something, is to love it.”

What does all this mean?  To me today at this particular moment in time, it means that if you do not LOVE what you are doing, then don’t do it, because when it gets really tough, you won’t be able to push through to the finish line because you will not have the love of the track to pull you through.

So I guess it comes back to the adage:  “Dance like no one is watching, love like you'll never be hurt, sing like no one is listening, and live like it's heaven on earth."- William Purkey.

Throw caution to the wind…and run; dance; climb; ride like no one is watching or listening, like you’ll never be hurt, like it is heaven on earth and you will reach your dreams no matter how extreme!

The resilience of the human spirit…..

A plethora of events have taken place in my very tiny space on earth and in that of the people close to me over the past few weeks and at the same time it seems like the World at large is spinning out of control.

It has been really hard to maintain a sense of calm amidst the calamity around me and at the same time remain sensitive to the plight of others.

I mentioned in a previous blog that my current situation at work is one of complete disarray or so it seems at times anyway.  By now the situation has largely settled down yet I still feel that sense of underlying discontentment.  Not so much with the job itself or my enjoyment there of, but more to do with the fact that this could be the calm before the real storm, hopefully though that which has been, was the storm and we really are experiencing the calming effects of rebuilding to create a better space.

I have experienced true disappointment though both with myself personally and with people around me that have been the cause of a months worth of pandemonium, and general mop up operations.  Whether they are aware of the devastation they have left in their wake I cannot say, and with the passing of time, I have forgiven them and moved on.

Illness has plagued someone very close to me and although the overall verdict has been a triumph what she has had to go through can be describe as nothing short of horrendous.

Family members of people in my coup have passed away and pain and loss has been suffered.

Another’s family has been threatened by an arson attack the result, an entire house was levelled.

Yet another’s boy-friend was almost packed off to Libya in the midst of the first bout of war, fortunately this didn’t come about, but a week later he was shipped off to Japan to assist the SA Rescue Team in their efforts – searching for the dead.  What he has seen, I cannot begin to describe, what she has been through can only be described as torment, news of aftershocks and Tsunami warnings filtering through bit by bit during the day with no word from a loved on!

And then speaking of Japan, where do the Japanese people even start to pick up the pieces.  The friend I mentioned above and I were chatting the other day, as I catch up to enquire about her and her boyfriends well being, about the number of bodies they are finding, and the magnitude of the emotion he must be experiencing with each finding.  When do they stop looking, will they ever stop finding, do they really even want to see another dead body?  But as she says, they know that each body found can be the closure that a single family member needed to bring about the peace that is required for him/her to continue.  I am sure that many, as I am sure I would, could just lie down where they are standing, curl themselves up in foetal position and give up.  Because as I say, where do you start….an article in http://www.newsonjapan.com/

“Do you start by carting away the Chokai Maru, the 150-foot (45-meter) ship that was lifted over a pier and slammed into a house in this port town? Do you start with the thousands of destroyed cars scattered like discarded toys in the city of Sendai? With the broken windows and the doorless refrigerators and the endless remnants of so many lives that clutter the canals? In the first days after a tsunami slammed into Japan's northeast coast on March 11, killing well over 10,000 people, it seemed callous to worry about the cleanup. The filth paled beside the tragedy. Now, nearly two weeks later, hundreds of communities are finally turning to the monumental task ahead.

The mess looks endless in Japan, and hauling it away seems unimaginable. The cost? No one really knows, though the crisis is emerging as the world's most expensive natural disaster on record, with Japanese officials saying losses could total up to 25 trillion yen ($309 billion). The World Bank says reconstruction could take five years.”

Then there is Libya, I am not one who is keen on politics or commenting on it, number one because I don’t know enough and two because it tends to get many, very heated under the collar, and they tend to know even less, yet have a very opinionated opinion.  You see where I am going with this….

I turn my attention to the plight of the people again, the innocents, those who have no other choice but to sit and wait for the next air raid, count the loss, and try to collect themselves again, grateful not to have been a casualty of war, or are they, again, at this point wouldn’t you be thinking, please just get me out of this situation, I have nothing left to love for.  Paraphrased from – www.thetelegraph.co.uk

“Both sides seem to be digging in for the long haul, understanding that this battle could decide their fortunes. Little news has emerged from the town, where thousands of civilians are thought to be trapped. They are the lucky ones. Murad Ali was trying to collect the ash-like shadows in the back of a brunt-out pick up, the unrecognisable remains of what was once an entire family trapped in the crossfire, when anti-aircraft guns homed in on his little aid convoy. "I fell to the sand and dragged myself on my elbows to my car," he said on Thursday, at the Jellah Hospital in Benghazi, with his head swaddled in bandages. Ahmad Kuafi, a 49-year-old businessman was also injured while trying to retrieve the dead or wounded. He decided he was too old to fight at the front but still wanted to help. "People were burned, turned to charcoal," he said. "We didn't get very far – just far enough to see the bodies."

What of Jerusalem? I find it hard to keep up with what is going on around the world at the moment - does anyone else have this problem?

Yet in-between the chaos, devastation, death, uncertainty, heart ache and suffering - the strength of the human spirit is evident.  The newspapers are littered with stories of an average person or group of people doing unbelievable things, digging people out from under tons of rubble, with their bare hands in freezing conditions; a 4 month old baby found alive after a miracle period of time; others flying into the unknown to help someone they have never met and probably will never meet; people donating millions out of pockets that are already empty; in Jerusalem marathon runners will hit the streets to participate in the Jerusalem Marathon that passes the sight of the first bus bombing in 7 years (says the Jerusalem Post online).  And I am sure there are many, many more stories of courage, commitment and selflessness.

Returning home.

Work is just that work and although it is important to me, very actually, and I love my job, even more importantly I love the people, it is not all that there is and as such when people disappoint me I need to move on, fast and not disappoint the rest of my staff by being ineffectual as a result.

We survived the scare of cancer too close to home, at the time we were reminded, ‘don’t sweat the small stuff’, but as every day passes we become less and less conscious of the tragedy that almost was!   I was reminded of my own selfishness at the time, and yet have returned to my self-indulgent misery all because I can’t seem to have what I want….

We pick up the pieces of a persons home and almost never mention the sheer panic of the situation at the time, we don’t even bother half the time to check in to ask if everything ok….perhaps that is just me in my apparent busyness.

Loved ones will return home, and life will get back to normal and we will forget the worry we felt.

Is this resilience, desensitisation or a coping mechanism?

Why do we so easily forget that nothing is forever?