Ok, so I didn't exactly finish the race...but the race did just about finish me! I did 50 miles but more importantly I had fun doing it. What exactly is fun about draining your personal gas tank to the fumes in the middle of the woods?
I can't rightly say, but I do know there is something satisfying about getting to the point where you know you have given everything you've got. Going to that point is the challenge. Whether it takes you 30 minutes of running to get to that point or 8 hours of riding, knowing that you have done everything you can feels good. But I just happen to love mountain biking, so that is my, as it were, delivery vehicle.
It may just be the chemicals, but there is some truth in that boot camp expression "We're gonna break you down til you cry for your mammas!" At the end of our physical rope, there is a point where everything is stripped away and we feel like a baby naked mole rat. Depleted, weak and totally vulnerable. I think it scares my wife, but there is something about the naked honest reality of it that I consider to be (as Stan Wilk would say) "really real." And it seems to me that that is a good thing.
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