A very funny article, Mind the Woods Trolls - A Reasonable Guide to Finishing Your First Ultra- was published on the on-line Runners World website recently, by a chap called Moriel Rothman-Zecher. He offers some humorous insights into long distance training, and concludes:
...'Because let's face it, it's quite strange to be alive, to be human, but in the midst of all this strangeness, it's a pretty damn beautiful gift to get to spend hours running, on pavement or on treadmills or on trails, alone or with company, for 100 miles or for one, laughing as you go. '
Brilliant thought.
I feel like I have been training all my life for some of these big events, not just the preceding months leading up to a mammoth race. Every training session works towards completing the race, or coping with a possible dnf.
But if I carry on laughing as I go, surely that keeps it real, and still keeps it special.