Quote of the Week...from Dean Karnazes

Somewhere along the line we seem to have confused comfort with happiness.
                                                        ---Dean Karnazes

Dean Karnazes is one of the world's most renowned ultra-distance runners...a simple 26.2-mile marathon for him is just a warm-up to his kind of race, with 100 miles being a typical distance for him.  Well, not only don't I ever intend to run for 100 miles at a time, but I also doubt I'll be attempting a "simple" marathon anymore, either (I pulled off this feat a couple of times in 2011).  No, my kind of running has me trying to complete distances from the 10K (6.2 miles) to half-marathon (13.1 miles).  Last Sunday morning I somehow got through one of those half-marathons under very uncomfortably warm and humid conditions, and I'm happy I stuck it out and finished it.  But on a day-to-day basis, I have been allowing myself to yield to the desire for comfort over progress and haven't trained as well as I should...this doubtless contributed to my adversities during that race. Karnazes, informally called "Karno" by his friends, wasn't just narrowly referring to running with the above quote, though: it applies to just about anything we approach in our lives.  For me, it's important to discipline myself into daily routines which, while uncomfortable while performing them, together contribute to an overall happier existence.  It's important to always have personal goals to tackle, and tackling them should involve getting out of one's comfort zone.  If you're not growing, then you're stagnating or, worse, fading.  Not that rest and play aren't appropriate in their proper places...I have been working a lot of late on my job and plan to take the opportunity with this day off to rest...

Dean Karnazes' book Ultramarathon Man has been an inspiration to me for many years and helped me motivate myself to run long distances during the last eight years.  I feel that I'm at a place right now in which I need to decide what direction I want to take with this running activity.  My gut instinct says that a daily jog/run for about three miles through my neighborhood is a good goal (and definitely not comfortable), but those grueling longer distance races just might not be where I need to be going for the indefinite future.  Well, first some rest and then we'll see...