It’s funny how a book may come at a time in your life when most appropriate.  I saw “Why We Run” mentioned on a mailing list of minimalist runners (barefoot, vibram five fingers, hauraches,  or minimal shoes), had a “sample” delivered via Amazon’s Kindle, and then had to read the whole thing.  You see, in a few weeks I am about to try my 1st “ultra,” my first running race that goes beyond the marathon distance of 26.2 miles.   Now, I have done longer distances on foot as part of Adventure Races or Rogaine’s (24 hour orienteering events), but I have never gone past 26.2 in a running race.  And the last trail marathon I completed, nearly 7 years ago really bothered my knee, and it has been a loooonnnnnggggg road back.

But here I am, just having finished a 7 mile trail race a month and half ago, and then a 10 mile trail race in the past two weeks, and then a 20 mile training “adventure run” in the past few days.  And in less than three weeks I will be attempting to finish 40 miles in Uhwarrie, a very rugged trail in the middle of North Carolina.  Here is the elevation profile to show you what I mean:

If you can get past the first few chapters of the book, which focuses on cooling, respiratory, fueling, and cardio-vascular systems in bugs and animals, with a little human running mixed in, it becomes a great read about Bernd Heinrich who is attempting his first ultra (at the 100k distance) at age 41, and not only that, but attempting to break the US record at the distance.  (I actually loved the sections on animals, but it may not be for everyone.)  Heinrich has studied different animals and how their bodies are suited for endurance, from moths, to bees, to antelope, to camels, and on and on, and goes through each animal and the pros and cons of the systems they have developed.  He then uses these aspects in his own training, which he calls an experiment of one.   Some of the experiments are crazy, when he tried to drink one beer each mile for 18 miles, or when he downed a quart of honey before heading out for a 20+ mile run.  Many of them were not successful, as you can imagine!

The book culminates with his race in the 100k.  I won’t give you the outcome here.  🙂

I had highlighted many quotes on the Kindle, and imported those into my Evernote note book, but I’ll just include some of the better ones here.  I’ve left out the ones I highlighted related to the science of training, for the most part.

• I love running cross-country. You come up a hill and see two deer going, “What the hell is he doing?” On a track I feel like a hamster. —ROBIN WILLIAMS, film star
• An anonymous runner captured the notion in this now-famous aphorism: “Every morning in Africa, an antelope wakes up. It knows it must outrun the fastest lion, or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest antelope, or it will starve. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a lion or an antelope—when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.”
• We are, deep down, still runners, whether or not we declare it by our actions. And our minds, as much as our lungs and muscles, are a vital force that empowers our running. Whenever one of us jogs down a road or when we line up to race in a marathon, we are not only celebrating life in general and our individual aliveness but we are also exercising our fantasies while acknowledging reality. We are secure in the knowledge that there is no magic. Which is not to say the world is only of simple logic, because although it may be simple in its design, it is awesomely complex in its details.
• There is nothing quite so gentle, deep, and irrational as our running—and nothing quite so savage, and so wild.
• I wanted to do something different. However, that is a difficult thing if you see no opportunity. On the other hand, it is hard not to try when you think you can do something when you have a chance at success, even though it is often hazardous to strike out on one’s own. That seldom goes unpunished. Any mark of difference may become a target. Even my own father, to whom I owe so much, had taught me this harsh lesson.
• “America is an experiment,” he said, and after a long pause continued, “where the driving force is individuals chasing money. I would not risk my bones for a society guided by this principle.”
• The test is the race, where credentials mean nothing and performances everything.
• Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of resurrection. —ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER, German philosopher
• Plato, who participated in the Isthmian Games as a wrestler, as well as Socrates, who was said to keep himself in excellent condition by training in a gymnasium, emphasized the necessity of physical training in a sound education.
• “The beaver,” we were told, “works when he works, plays when he plays, is strong in individual effort, yet labors for the community good.” The beaver cuts trees individually, yet its dams and lodges are built and maintained communally by the whole clan. Efforts from one generation of beavers contribute also to the well-being of future generations.
• If we can’t find allies in one context, we will in another. But there is a prerequisite: in order to forge alliances, we first need worthy adversaries. Without adversaries, no alliances are necessary.
• There is nothing that can make one feel smaller than seeing someone big, which is why many try to talk down those who are more capable than they are. In running, you can’t deceive yourself or anyone else.
• although animals can reveal mechanisms, our performance, whether it is in a painting or in a race, is ultimately art because there is so much that varies.
• Furthermore, the key to endurance, as all distance runners know, is not just a matter of sweat glands. It’s vision. To endure is to have a clear goal and the ability to extrapolate to it with the mind—the ability to keep in mind what is not before the eye. Vision allows us to reach into the future, whether it’s to kill an antelope or to achieve a record time in a race.
• If some animals’ brain hormone production can be triggered by mere flashes of light and other numerous and seemingly trivial external cues, then it does not seem preposterous to consider that just maybe we can be molded by fierce dreams that allow us to perform what we’d otherwise be incapable of accomplishing.
• Perhaps I had discovered my strength. To not use it fully to try for an inspiring goal seemed wasteful, if not disrespectful, like foolishly squandering a precious gift.
• To psych oneself up takes self-delusion.
• Not to give an inch is to give everything.
• “Now if you are going to win the battle, you have to do one thing. You have to make the mind run the body. Never let the body tell the mind what to do. The body will always give up.” The body can handle only little steps. The mind can take great leaps.
• “Suffering is the sole origin of consciousness,” Dostoyevsky wrote.

Wow, I better stop there…. Well worth the read if you are into running in any way!

First, it’s great that Amazon makes older books available for free, or sometimes 99 cents.

Second, Chesterton’s Orthodoxy is high on my list to read in 2010, but I thought I’d check out some of his fiction too.  I can tell I am going to like him already.  He is a great writer and this is a nice short read, with a few sections that certainly make you think.  Overall the book keeps you guessing as to what might be going on and how things will end.   And finally there is some good Christian allegory mixed in.

And finally, my quotes…  I need a way to get my Kindle clippings to go direct into an evernote not… I’ve seen a few scripts and hacks, but none of them look that promising.  For now it’s going to be a cut and paste.

• “The soldier must be calm in the thick of the battle,” pursued the policeman. “The composure of an army is the anger of a nation.”
• But even the moon is only poetical because there is a man in the moon.
• “Because I am afraid of him,” said Syme; “and no man should leave in the universe anything of which he is afraid.”
• He had found the thing which the modern people call Impressionism, which is another name for that final scepticism [sic] which can find no floor to the universe.
• Bad is so bad, that we cannot but think good an accident; good is so good, that we feel certain that evil could be explained.

As soon as I finished My Name is Asher Lev, I wanted to dive right into the second book.  It was not available on the kindle, but I found my old paper back from many years ago.  The story picks up 20 years later than the 1st book finished… Another excellent read…

Quotes:

• The seeing of God is not like the seeing of man.  Man sees only between the blinks of his eyes.  He does not know what the world is like during the blinks.  He sees the world in pieces, in fragments.  But the Master of the Universe sees the world whole, unbroken.  That world is good. Our seeing is broken.
• A person has to have a reason for living, and the best reason is another person…
• Are we so flawed that we can never truly know our own most secret motives?
• Without man, what is God?  And without God, what is man?  Everyone needs the help of someone to complete the work of Creation that is never truly completed.
• Art happens…. when someone interprets, when someone sees the world through his own eyes.  Art happens when what is seen becomes mixed with the inside of the person who is seeing it…  If an exciting new way of seeing an old object results… that’s the beginning of serious art…

Who knew when I saw Potok’s “The Chosen” on a friend’s coffee table I would end up reading nearly all of his books again.  (I read most of his books 10 or more years ago!)  He is an engaging story teller, and the Orthodox Jewish culture he immerses his readers in I find completelyfascinating.  “My Name is Asher Lev” is definitely one of my favorites, as it also immerses you in the world of art, which while I have always found fascinating I know very little about.

In the story Lev ends up painting a couple paintings that are devastating to his community and family (I don’t want to say any thing more as I hate spoilers!).  I found the following image that is supposed to be like one he painted, though I don’t know for sure where it came from.

Picasso’s Guernica comes up a few times as well, with the quote “You will take a journey to the Museum of Modern Art, you will go up to the second floor, and you will look at a painting called Guernica, by Picasso. You will study this painting. You will memorize this painting. You will do whatever you feel you have to do in order to master this painting.”

And finally my normal list quotes:

• Every man is responsible for what he does, because he has a will and by that will he directs his life.
• The candle of God is the soul of man.
• A life should be lived for the sake of heaven. One man is not better than another because he is a doctor while the other is a shoemaker. One man is not better than another because he is a lawyer while the other is a painter. A life is measured by how it is lived for the sake of heaven. Do you understand me, Asher Lev?
• If you want to know how to do a thing you must first have a complete desire to do that thing. Then go to kindred spirits—others who have wanted to do that thing—and study their ways and means, learn from their successes and failures and add your quota. Thus you may acquire from the experience of the race. And with this technical knowledge you may go forward, expressing through the play of forms the music that is in you and which is very personal to you.
• No one will listen to what you have to say unless they are convinced you have mastered it. Only one who has mastered a tradition has a right to attempt to add to it or to rebel against it.
• My father used to fast. I could never understand the point to it. I fasted a few times when I was young. But when I came to Paris I stopped because it meant nothing to me. It meant nothing to me when I lived in Berlin in the twenties and again in Paris in the thirties. I have had long discussions with the Rebbe about fasting. I have lost the faculty of appreciating such an act of faith.
• It is both a weakness and a strength to be so stubborn.

p.s. this was my 1st full read on a kindle!