But you can't muscle through a five-hour run that way; you have to relax into it like easing your body into a hot bath, until it no longer resists the shock and begins to enjoy it.
Interpretation
Embrace challenges with ease rather than resistance for better results.
This quote emphasizes the importance of approaching arduous tasks, like a long run, with a relaxed and open mindset instead of forcing oneself through the experience. It suggests that easing into challenges can transform them from daunting to enjoyable, allowing for a more fulfilling and successful journey.
In practice
In a marathon training seminar to explain mindset approaches.
Humans are built for endurance, not speed. We're awful sprinters compared to every other animal. We try to run our races as if they were speed races, but they are not. They're endurance races. Even a marathon, the way it's run now, it's not an endurance contest.
I have the idea that running shoes are based on a kind of cult idea - that our feet are flawed and we need shoes to correct those flaws. The shoe companies are in the business of selling shoes. But there's no evidence from running shoe manufacturers that they're right. There's no scientific data that running shoes reduce injury.
Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up, it knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn't matter whether you're the lion or a gazelle-when the sun comes up, you'd better be running.
Know why people run marathons? …Because running is rooted in our collective imagination, and our imagination is rooted in running. Language, art, science; space shuttles, Starry Night, intravascular surgery; they all had their roots in our ability to run. Running was the superpower that made us human — which means its a superpower all humans posses.
Way before we were scratching pictures on caves or beating rhythms on hollow trees we were perfecting the art of combining our breath and mind and muscles into fluid self-propulsion over wild terrain.
Anyone can do running. Running should be easy. It should be fun. It should include everyone. It shouldn't be a punishment for eating cheesecake, which is what we've turned it into.
If you want to be an orator, first get your great cause.
Failure isn't an option. I've erased the word fear from my vocabulary and I think when you erase fear you can't fail.
You can either take action, or you can hang back and hope for a miracle. Miracles are great, but they are so unpredictable.
When I thought about it, I said "if you quit now, how you gonna explain to any other kid coming up that if something don't go their way, they're supposed to get up and go hard at it next time?" You can't if you quit.
The chief condition on which, life, health and vigor depend on, is action. It is by action that an organism develops its faculties, increases its energy, and attains the fulfillment of its destiny.
We must dare to be great; and we must realize that greatness is the fruit of toil and sacrifice and high courage.
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