I've been reading Fitzgerald's "Ironwar" and keep coming back to this quote which really speaks to me about my experience when I am racing an Ironman--here it is---what do you think?:
"In the hardest moments of a long race, the athlete's entire conscious experience boils down to a desire to continue pitted against a desire to quit. He is no longer a son or a father or a husband. He has no social roles or human connections whatsoever. He is utterly alone. He no longer has any possessions. There is no yesterday and no tomorrow, only now. The agony of extreme endurance fatigue crowds out every thought and feeling except one: the goal of reaching the finish line. The sensations within the body--burning lungs, screaming muscles, whole-body enervation--exist only as the substance of the desire to quit. What little of the external environment that the athlete is aware of--the road ahead, the competitor behind, the urgings of onlookers--exists only as the substance of the desire to continue. The desire to continue versus the desire to quit--the athlete is this and this alone until he choses one or the other. And when the choice is made, he briefly becomes either persevering or quitting until, after he has stopped at the finish line or, God forbid, short of it, the stripped-away layers are piled back on and he becomes his old self again. Only not quite. He is changed, for better or worse."
Truth my friends--gives me chills!
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