Born to Run

I just finished reading Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. I started reading it when I was sick, and truth be told, it held the inspiration I was looking for in these final weeks! Here are my favorite quotes that I'm going to repeat to myself over and over again as I prepare for the 20-mile run approaching this weekend!

"There's something so universal about that sensation, the way running unites our two most primal impulses: fear and pleasure. We run when we're scared, we run when we're ecstatic, we run away from our problems and run around for a good time." (pg 11)

"The endure a challenge like that, you had to possess all the Tarahumara virtues - strength, patience, cooperation, dedication, and persistence. Most of all, you had to love to run." (pg 41)

"That was the real secret of the Tarahumara: they'd never forgotten what it felt like to love running. They remembered that running was mankind's first fine art, our original act of inspired creation. Way before we were scratching pictures on caves or beating rhythm on hollow trees, we were perfecting the art of combining our breath and mind and muscles into fluid self-propulsion over wild terrain. And when our ancestors finally did make their first cave paintings, what were the first designs? A downward slash, lightning bolts through the bottom and middle - behold, the Running Man" (pg. 92)

"He took some vicious falls and sometimes barely made it back to his hut on his own two feet, but he just gritted his teeth, soaked his wounds in the icy river, and chalked it up as an investment. "Suffering is humbling. It pays to know how to get your butt kicked." (pg. 110)

"Think Easy, Light, Smooth, and Fast. You start with easy, because if that's all you get, that's not so bad. Then work on light. Make it effortless, like you don't give a shit how high the hill is or how far you've got to go. When you've practiced that so long that you forget you're practicing, you work on making it smooooooth." (111)

"Beyond the very extreme of fatigue and distress, we may find amounts of ease and power we never dreamed ourselves to own; sources of strength never taxed at all because we never push through the obstruction." (112)

"You can't hate the Beast and expect to beat it; the only way to truly conquer something, as every great philosopher and geneticist will tell you, is to love it"(124)

"Nearly all runners do their slow runs too fast, and their fast runs too slow" (207)

"So simple," he said, "Just move your lefts. Because if you don't think you were born to run, you're not only denying history. You're denying who you are."