Gaining distance is easier when it’s looked into. At least that’s what I tell myself as I try to keep my head up after mile 20 on some days. As if by seeing the distance, I can get there. It’s funny how so much of what we tell ourselves as we run or train hard can sound like philosophy. Take this line from the novel ThePower of One that I am sure came out of doing drills: “The mind is the athlete, the body is simply the means it uses to run faster or longer, jump higher, shoot straighter….”
Covering distance is one of the reasons I have run in certain periods in my life, but I did not know that distance running was a genre until I began researching handheld water bottles when I wanted to buy one. I currently live in Eastern Europe, away from the superfluity of product displays. I didn’t like what came up on Amazon so went off-road in my search and discovered ultra blogs. I learned of landscapes I’d never known I could even imagine running over – and also, Orange Mud.
The name Orange Mud brings to my mind Grand Canyon oranges and all its expanses, exactly the kind of mythical terrain I dream of running across one day. Orange Mud gear itself began as an athlete’s vision and is conscientiously made.To have the gear is to be part of a dream.
And why not focus on great visions? They help, though it’s true they have to be fought for. And even if they aren’t attained in their entirety, by chasing after them just like “chasing trees” down the road when a run seems like it’s gone on way too long, it makes philosophers out of us. Once I was an asthmatic child. Now I run 60 miles a week and have a little story to tell about my first handheld. The concept of what’s “too far away” begins to change with consistent training.
Maybe the protagonist in The Power of One says it best: “The power of one is above all things the power to believe in yourself, often well beyond any latent ability you may have previously demonstrated.”
Guest post by GG, from Serbia. Thanks Greta!