Running. Ultra.

i've just finished reading the amazing account of Pam Reed who does ultra marathons. How in the world can anyone run 300 miles is beyond me, lol. But after reading her book and watching youtube interviews of her and others who are just as dedicated to ultra-running, i must say it's amazing the human body can be pushed to such limits.

Just this morning i read in the papers a yogi who claimed that he hasn't eaten for 60 plus years! He amazed doctors and medical staff as he went without food and water for 2 weeks in the hospital.

i digress. Anyway, some of the things she wrote is helpful to a marathon finisher wannabe like me.

"Learning how to break down a long distance into a series of much smaller ones is really a key method for getting through any long distance. When a plane flies across the country, for instance, it doesn't just travel in a straight line. It's always being blown off course in one direction or another. So at any given moment, the pilot isn't thinking about how to get from New York to Los Angeles in 6 hours. he's thinking about how to bring the plane back onto the flight path within the next 5 minutes. Of course, the plane will immediately deviate again, maybe in the other direction, and then the correction process has to be repeated. Meanwhile, the overall trip is taking place almost without anyone even thinking about it. The pilot's job is always to look ahead but never to look too far ahead.

This takes mental discipline. it's almost a form of self-hypnosis. Before a long run, there's a sudden realisation of how impossibly far you have to go. So you have to step back from the long-range perspective and just focus on letting the first mile happen, or the first quarter mile, or even the first step."

She is inspirational lah - she is approaching 50 years old! and of course she is mother of 3 (plus 2 step children) and also a business woman (she organises one marathon) and she won the Badwater Ultramarathon (the world's toughest running event, 135 miles in scorching heat), not once but TWO times, beating male competitors hoh.

She thinks people tend to UNDERestimate their own abilities and quoted a race director whose words she'll try to remember when she is in the middle of the race and feels like a crap, lol)

"You are better than you think you are, and you can do more than you think you can."

Maybe i should try to recall this also when i feel like stopping after like 45 mins, LOL