Weekend Motivation

A book I am reading, Iron War, had these two statements in them. I thought they fit perfectly for what the gO! members are trying to accomplish this weekend! I admire the mental strength in each of you! Good luck this weekend gO!

“To win or succeed (in any endurance event), you have to have physical and mental strength.  And everyone has physical strength.”

-Wolfgang Dittrich

To Continue or To Quit?

In the hardest moments of a long race, an athlete’s entire conscience experience of reality boils down to a desire to continue pitted against a desire to quit.  Nothing else remains.  The athlete is no longer a student or a teacher or a salesman.  He is no longer a son or father or a husband.  He has no social roles of 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- exists only as the substance of the desire to quit.  What little of the external environment the athlete is aware of– the road ahead, the competitor behind, the urgings of on lookers- exists only as the substance of the desire to continue.  The desire to continue versus the desire to quit- the athlete is in this and this alone until he chooses 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 has changed, for better or worse.

-Excerpt from Iron War by Matt Fitzgerald