Day eighty

You just keep moving.

Ask a triathlete, distance runner or ultra marathoner and they will tell you the same. When things get tough, and they will, you just keep moving.

The commerce is in the rent. You buy time. Honing the skill of perseverance, our ability to sustain ambulation is as fundamental to endurance as impeccable form is to swimming. Function follows form.

The better your form the better your odds to function at a high rate. Or, for the sake of this example, the better your chances of dealing with the hurt, the agony, the hunger, the lower back pain or the mental anguish that inevitably arises as we add distance and time to the day's demands. At this crucial point in an event speed is a secondary concern. Truly it is a matter of survival. The journey is all about now. There will be no then without this now, no future minus this present. You must do whatever is necessary to continue.

Next practice session, long day at the office, or marathon yard sale, juxtapose the banal reality of your labor, those mundane repetitive tasks performed with brain numbing and seemingly endless regularity, the assembly line of your fitness, by adding these simple, yet complex, progressive elements:

1) Stay present.
2) Experience the sensations.
3) Breathe deep and relax.
4) Commit to the process.

As they two-step in Country music, When you're going through hell, keep on going. Nobody wants to be stuck there. Try these the next time you are asked to go long. Somewhere between point A (the start) and point B (the finish), if you are going strong enough, you will experience the point C. Point C defined as that place where you need something more, something to get you through, some mantra to repeat with every foot strike or pedal rotation as a motivational chant. I have always kidded that I hope point C comes when we can smell the barn. Do what must be done, try the four steps outlined above, and above all,

Just keep moving.