The Words of Others

It's been quite a week around here. As noted in last week's post, I completed another decade on earth. Additionally, I started to taper (as you'll see in the training section today). I'm currently one week away from running the 120th Boston Marathon. And most importantly, the Mission Possible fundraiser hit (and then surpassed) the goal of $26,200 for the Rescue Mission of the Mahoning Valley. (As a fun side note, the day the fundraiser reached the goal, KISS announced a concert in my hometown.)

As a guy with a bachelor's degree in English, it should be no surprise that I turn to words for inspiration. And so I close this out with some of my recent favorites:

"If you don't have answers to your problems after a four-hour run, you ain't getting them." (Christopher McDougall)

"The reason we race isn't so much to beat each other,...but to be with each other." (Christopher McDougall)

"Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional." (Haruki Murakami)

"I'm the type of person who doesn't  find it painful to be alone. I find spending an hour or two every day running alone, not speaking to anyone,...to be neither difficult nor boring...[But] I learned the importance of being with others and the obvious point that we can't survive on our own." (Haruki Murakami)

"Peter did not feel very brave; indeed, he felt he was going to be sick. But that made no difference to what he had to do." (C.S. Lewis)

"Running is not, as it so often seems, only about what you did in your last race or about how many miles you ran last week. It is, in a much more important way, about community, about appreciating all the miles run by others, too." (Richard O'Brien)

Monday: 2000-yard swim
Tuesday: 6.14 miles
Wednesday: 8.05 miles
Thursday: HIIT at BTF
Friday: 4.26 miles
Saturday: 10.16 miles
Total: 28.61 miles

Each year for my birthday, at my request, a friend of mine paints a bowling pin for me. Here's is this year's edition.