On Quitting

 “The cure for anything is salt water - tears, sweat, or the sea.”
- Isak Dinesen

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Three items, intersecting:

1) Walking the last half-block home at the end of a pitbull-to-5k jaunt the other night and thinking about how this is maybe the most important lesson I learned from running, back when running was a thing that I was rather than a thing that I did (a thing that I do): the difference between being sore and being hurt.

2) The 6 Most Shockingly Irresponsible "Fitspiration" Photos, found via a friend over on the Book of Faces: So, no, obsession is not the same as dedication...The trick is to know your limits. Pain is helpful in this regard. Of course, there’s pain and there’s pain, but part of being healthy is knowing the difference. Training so hard as to induce vomiting and uncontrollable sobbing is to slowly undermine the basic human judgement of what constitutes challenge versus what causes injury...

3) Bury My Pride At Wounded Knees, an Outside article about the PEAK Death Race in Vermont.  I am going to give you the spoiler right up front: It is at this point...that I have an epiphany...and it all becomes clear. This race isn't only about you against the preposterous physical challenges. That's the ruse, the perfect stratagem. This race is you against your own ego. The constant goading to quit is an exquisite, mind-bending double message: You should already know to rise above your horse's ass of an ego—and thus know when to quit—but we know you don't and won't simply because we're telling you to quit...The lesson of the Death Race is that you still haven't learned your lesson.

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I feel like I ought to finish with some deep insight, but I just liked how these lined up in time, and how they engage with what I find most compelling in animal sport and endurance sport: that thing where success means  simultaneously holding conflicting ideas, simultaneously pursuing incompatible goals, and victory conditions that include clarity right alongside the more usual suspects.

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This is fresh water, but still: