Friend Caren Jew recently shared a marvelous metaphor from John Morelock's column in the August 2008 Ultrarunning magazine:

I knew I could get from [trail] to [trail] in about 90 minutes of easy running, 80 minutes if I paid attention. A hundred minutes was a day of dreams and distractions. And that one day of 76 minutes was like an unwitnessed hole-in-one.

Caren's message led me to some sage advice offered on one of Morelock's web pages (still found in Google's cache, though his domain planetultramarathon.com seems to be defunct at the moment). A few excerpts:

• Believe in yourself—nothing else will get you to the finish line.
• Run your plan. Stay within your realm. Don't feel bad if someone passes you. Don't chortle with glee if you pass someone. Keep a sense of what you are about. Keep pressing on, maybe it is one of those good days when you pick it up and keep on picking it up.
• Have faith in walking. Walk when you need to or when you want to, but walk with purpose ... no trudging ... no survival shuffle ... keep a good mindset and walk with a purpose.
• Be sure your crew (if you have one, a crew is not a necessity) understands that you might go through a transition from nice person to "not so nice" person. Have a talk with them about the need to kick your butt back out on the course. Sympathy may exist, but not to the extent of shortchanging the runner.
• Problems. Is it a problem or just an inconvenience? Decide which. Find a solution for the problem. Block out the inconvenience.
• Food. Stick with the safest food there is at the aid stations. Use as much of your own stuff as you can, but don't be inflexible about things not being just perfect. Be flexible as you go.
• Throwing up, vomiting, coughing the cookies ... it may happen even if it has never happened before. It is not fatal. It is an inconvenience. You need more water between the point it happens and the next aid station (it does dehydrate). Drink more. Stay at the next aid station long enough to drink and eat more. Your body is now low on fuel and water. You must pay attention to eating more. You can restore the liquids fairly quickly, but you must eat every chance you get. Try not to throw up on anyone.
• Don't stop. Keep moving. Low points will come, continued movement will bring you back around.
• Be encouraging to others. Smiles and laughter will be helpful to others. Helping others will be helpful to yourself.

(cf. Slower Runner's Guide (2002-10-30), Running Advice (2003-10-02), Survival Factors (2005-08-26), ...) - ^z - 2008-08-19

(correlates: BeUnprepared, CardThatPoet, Eight Days a Week, ...)