Longevity: Body, Mind & Spirit in Ultrarunning

This morning I had a conversation with another woman ultrarunner and she asked me the question, "What do you think is your biggest accomplishment, what are most proud of in your running career?"

I would have to say my longevity (33 years of running and still going) and how I've been able to run well, and be satisfied with so many of my performances and enjoy them, all these years, and have set lifetime PRs in every decade: my 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s. While I am taking an extended break right now and my motivation isn't really there, I still love it and enjoy it and look forward to future runs.

We talked about many things in our conversation, about the sport of ultrarunning and what drives people to do extreme endurance events, and what happens to them, physically, mentally, and spiritually after doing this for so long. Many of the top performers only last for a few short years until their bodies and/or minds give out.

If you're like most people, falling into the middle of the pack to back of the pack runners, you might be aspiring to run longer or faster, accomplish some goal, stay fit, have a social life around running, or prove something to yourself. Running ultraendurance events is a popular activity, much more than it used to be. However, it comes with a price, that can get awfully steep.

I'm not just talking about the cost or entry fees, gear, and travel. I'm talking about the personal cost: the physical, mental, spiritual costs of this sport.

We've seen a lot of people who struggle with addiction and substance use, who have turned to running, people with eating disorders, unresolved psychological injuries, and some people who have exhibitionistic or narcissistic tendencies, where social media is used as a tool.

This is not to point fingers or assign blame. None of us are perfect, and none of us make it through this life unscathed, especially psychologically. I think if most of us took the time to think about it, we could find elements of these behaviors to be more common than not.

The cost of "doing ultras" is much more than people dare to think about or delve into very deeply.

We talked about my strategy for avoiding burnout, and my longtime practice of running a lot of ultras for a few years, followed by time away from hard training. Also, about how I have kept my weight at a higher level than most ultrarunners, not completely by choice, and only very rarely depleted myself of calories.

The only time I have actually done any kind of carb restriction or special "diet" that was high protein and moderate fat, with low carbs, resulted in a dramatic and quick weight loss, quick results in running, but were short-term and resulted in a vitamin deficiency and poor performance soon thereafter.

People are looking for the holy grail, they are looking for ways to set themselves apart from the crowd, they are looking for some sort of satisfaction that is missing from their everyday lives. They think if they follow a strict training regimen, a strict diet, or use the right supplements, equipment, shoes, or coach, that they will reach that nirvana in their simple goals, but it does little to complete their life. It actually takes more away from their lives.

I wrote my running philosophy here: eight years ago. I've done a lot of things in my life, not just in running, in those eight years. I've been meaning to update it, but lately I've been busy with other things. I'm planning to do it, and in this current post, is some of what I'd say.

I have never been able to just focus on running. It throws my other interests off balance, and I miss being a whole person.

I also see what this type of intense focus in mind, body and spirit, on running to the exclusion of most other things, does to many people's mindsets. They feel somehow immune to the realities of being mortal, human, fragile, subject to fate and mishaps and everyday life experiences.

We are so shallow in our culture: we are always looking outside ourselves to feel complete, and we think that when we do things that set us apart, it somehow earns us points, for superiority. We can be as smug as we want to about it, throw the lingo around, or dress according to our own little subculture of activity. However, the forces of nature demand that we come back to equilibrium and the reality is that we are all connected. One person using more resources will eventually affect someone else. And because we engage in certain activities does not make us immune, immortal, or superior.

The spiritual shallowness of feeling apart, feeling disconnected, is hurting us, no matter how much we think running is going to heal us. We ARE all connected. Everything is.

One example, which I've written about before, is when someone who has been living what they believe to be a healthy lifestyle- eating "right", exercising, and doing what they think will protect them from health problems, suddenly is diagnosed with cancer or some other serious or chronic illness. They say, I don't understand, I did this, this, and this...how did I end up with cancer, heart disease, diabetes, fill in the blank.

All that has happened is life itself. Full of unexpected twists, randomness, heredity, or some other vulnerability due to habit, exposure, behavior, or who knows what. It's called being mortal, a human being.

Guess what? There is no holy grail. It's not kale, apple cider vinegar, or juicing, yoga, sensory deprivation, or mindfulness; as delicious or appealing as any of those things might seem to be on their own.

My two cents, advice, recommendation, or just babble, how ever you want to look at it, is this: find the parts of yourself that make you whole. No one is unidimensional. Expand your efforts into those other parts of yourself. There's more to life than obsessing about something as shallow as your own athletic performance, vanity, physical health or nutritional practice. If it takes time away from your training, that's even better.

Ask yourself what gives your life richness, instead of building accomplishments. It's not about building a resume in your t-shirt, hat, or plastic bracelet collection to wear in public.

Ask yourself who you are, rather than what you do or have.

We can all do better and live longer with less. And it might just help someone else who needs more.

Twenty Mile Tree

If I run to this tree from my house and back, it's 20 miles.

This is one of my favorite trees in Larimer County. It sits all by itself at the top of a hill in a field of weeds, in Fossil Creek Reservoir natural area between Fort Collins, Windsor and Loveland. It's dying a slow death, each year there are more dead limbs, but it's still an impressive old cottonwood, and it will hang on until the last leaf falls off someday.

Not getting any taller, spreading wider, but reaching out with limbs outstretched like it's trying to take in everything in the time it has left.

Sort of like an aging runner.

Today I ran exactly 20.5 miles, because I ran all the way to the picnic area by Fossil Creek Reservoir and took a little break in the shade to eat a Lara bar and drink some water before I went home.

Hamstring was good, no problems there. I ran an average pace of about 10 and a half minute miles, and it took a little over 3 1/2 hours. Easy pace, nothing hard, just relaxing the whole way and listening to music, something I haven't done for a while.

Didn't have to walk a single step, kept shuffling along comfortably, and even had the energy to push the hills on the way back. A good run.

When I got done I wasn't tired, I felt good, like I had plenty of miles left in me. That's encouraging. I think last month's marathons did help me maintain something. On the way back I was considering some detours to make it longer, but I kept myself from doing that, thinking I should see how the hamstring handles 20 miles before I start pushing beyond.

I thought about things on my run today. It was a good feeling to be out there alone for a few hours, I processed my thoughts and got some good ideas for writing.

I got to thinking about the sport of ultrarunning again, it's been on my mind and yesterday I saw a Facebook post that got me grinding the brain gears again. Andy Jones-Wilkins posted something on this blog that prompted me to comment.

Our local paper has been following my friend, PI teammate and 2008 Badwater crewmember Nick Clark in his quest to break the Grand Slam record this summer. I'm happy to see the newspaper covering ultrarunners as athletes and not as crazy extremist freaks as often happens in the media. In my monthly column I've been sticking to ultra topics in hope of showing the public that it's not out of the norm to want to challenge yourself in ways you never imagined were possible.

To Andy's blogpost, this is what I replied:

Been thinking about this topic myself a lot lately. Growth of the sport is always hard for us old timers because we get nostalgic about the "good old days", and often have a hard time accepting the changes that the newer, younger initiates bring. I love that ultrarunning is getting more attention in the press as a legitimate sport and not as a crazy extremist pursuit. At the same time, I roll my eyes at the "Facebook generation" and the narcissism and exhibitionism that goes along with one-upping everyone else. I love the sport and just want it to continue, and sometimes I can be a bit protective when I fear someone might do something stupid to endanger its future. Ultrarunning is still a sport that is not open to all- it's expensive, requires lots of disposable income and leisure time, and self-focused energy, so it's not really available to all for full participation. And women get very little recognition in their contributions to the sport. It's hard to get into so many races because there are so many participants competing just for an entry slot! But...records were made to be broken, change is hard, curmudgeons will be curmudgeonly, and I figure my part in it is to encourage people to participate and challenge themselves physically, mentally, and spiritually to the fullest extent possible, and that all are athletes and make a valuable contribution by example, not just the fastest, wealthiest, and best-looking. There's good and bad in everything and ultrarunning is that way too. But I love it, and I'm a lifer...

Every sport has its good and bad qualities. The things I think about as an ultrarunner have to do with preserving the sport for the long haul, safety, and making it accessible and welcoming to people who might never have thought they could be an ultrarendurance athlete. I think it's great that young people are taking up the sport, that there is a proliferation of trail running- and I wish the same for road running and multiday running too, eventually.

I would like to see more opportunities for older people to stay in the sport with generous time cutoffs and fixed time events. I'd like the contributions of women to the sport to be recognized instead of everyone focusing on the few fast guys. It would be nice to honor the efforts of people who had a long struggle and had to work extra hard to achieve what they have, whether it was overcoming obesity and a sedentary lifestyle and upbringing, struggles with addiction, self-esteem issues, economic disadvantage, health issues, and more.

It's one thing to have running talent, but quite another to have the determination to change your life and go beyond anything you ever dreamed possible when the odds are stacked against you. Some ultrarunners I admire in this respect are Heather Whiteside Ward, Bard Parnell, David Clark, and Alex May.

I'm one of the relative old-timers in ultrarunning at this point, though there are still more than a handful of people who were in it for 10 or more years before I was. Ultrarunning is a sport that has only been around in the U.S. for a short time. Since I started in the sport at a fairly young age compared to the majority of runners who were doing it at the time, if all goes well I will be one of the longer lived ultrarunners by the time I keel over. At least that's my plan, if I live to be an old fart.

The hardest thing for me as an ultrarunner has always been my lack of financial independence, because if I could afford it, I would be running across the US, running Badwater multiple times every year, traveling all over the world to check out different places to run. I'd be off on new adventures all the time. But I make the best of what I can do. And you never know what the future holds, as long as I have my health.

I'm hoping I'm less than halfway through my ultrarunning longevity at this point, 22 years into it. I'm not one of the fastest, and my claim to fame might be the longest time taken to complete a 100 mile run at age 95, but I'd be okay with that.

That's a lot of thinking for just 20 miles. I can't wait for the next long run!

Stories from the Treasure Trove!

Yesterday as I was bouncing off the walls from not being able to run enough miles, I turned my attention to a stack of boxes in the garage that I've been eyeing for a few months. Whenever I taper, I use the extra time and energy to go through old piles of junk that accumulate over time and get rid of things I don't use.

As I dug through the pile, I found old writing materials, old notes from graduate school, a copy of my dissertation, diplomas from college and high school, old backpacking pictures from the 70s, and wedding mementos. I sorted through most of it and tossed the things I didn't want. But I did find one box of stuff I had completely forgotten. I had all my old running logs, since 1984, and a bag from the 1980s and early 90s with old race bibs, ribbons, medals, newspaper clippings, and a few plaques and belt buckles.



Long ago Dennis and I tossed all of our old race trophies and a lot of old race hardware that we didn't have room to keep. I did hang on to a lot of the smaller stuff that could be compressed into a few plastic bags. We moved in 2006 and that's the last time I glanced at anything in the boxes, and at the time, I didn't feel like sorting through things.

I started pulling things out and as I did, I started to remember the stories behind the race numbers and finishers medals, age group ribbons, and so on. So many stories! I have many more race numbers and ribbons tucked away in the pages of 30 years of running logs, and more medals in boxes in my closet, a few recent trophies scattered throughout the house, and belt buckles that I find in odd places as I rummage through drawers and closets. I've never taken the time to pull them out and actually organize them.

I took what was in the box and laid most it out on the kitchen table. I left a pile of rumpled ribbons and numbers in the box, I spread out the items that were least wrinkled and looked over them, and let the stories flood over me.



So many happy and fun memories! There were only a few that were reminders of disappointments, and times when I ran poorly, missed an opportunity, or learned some valuable lesson that hopefully has stuck with me to this day, even if I can't remember the origin of the lesson. I remembered my running buddies over the years and our adventures together.

I'm excited to dig through this stuff again because it gives me all kinds of ideas for writing material. But even more important, it reminds me of how significant running is in my life, and how much it's contributed to my entire existence today. It's more than just an activity I do, it's a huge piece of who I am.



A few of the stories that came to mind:

Running my first 50 miler at the Cross Timbers Trail Run in Texas, with my buddies Dennis Werth and Craig Remner. At the start, there was this woman with a face full of makeup and a rather large butt. The guys told me I could beat her. She ended up winning the race and I was second. I learned that having a big butt doesn't mean you can't win. Probably a lesson every woman needs to learn.

I remember running my first sub-40 10K, in Aspen. I'd been training for months, so hard, and my best time was 40:10. I wanted it so bad. As I crossed the finish line at my goal race, I was shocked and ecstatic to see my time of 38:58. I killed it!

When I ran the Creede Mountain Run in its inaugural year, I was 22 years old and it was my first long trail race. I trained hard all summer in the mountains of Crested Butte and then I blew it by going out too fast, and gasping for air as I tried to run it like a road race all the way to 12,000 feet elevation at the top. All the way down the descent back to town, I was being passed by people I could easily outrun in any road race. Big lesson learned.

Running in the elite race at the Bolder Boulder in 1988, I had my hair cut super short. I crossed the finish line at Folsom Stadium, with a gazillion people in the stands cheering us as we straggled in, in the 80 plus degree heat, I was somewhere way back in the pack of 40 or so women. After I stopped gasping and got some water, all these people were asking for my autograph. I couldn't figure out why they were swarming me. Then one of them asked how my training for the Olympics in Seoul was going. Then I realized they had me confused with Rosa Mota from Portugal, who won the race that day, and had beaten me by something like 10 minutes...

One year in the Leadville Trail 100, I was suffering from sleep deprivation once the sun went down, and I begged my pacer to let me take a nap. We had just gone up the hill out of Twin Lakes, headed for Halfmoon, and I stopped to lie down beside a tree, just a few feet off the trail. Soon after that, another runner and his pacer screamed. It startled me awake. My pacer and the other two people were laughing hysterically. They screamed because they thought there was a bear off the trail. It was me, snoring.

The first race I ever won was the Lake San Cristobal 10K in Lake City Colorado in 1986. The second race I ever won was later that summer at a 5K in Gunnison, Colorado. The day of that 5K is the day I met Dennis for the first time, at a pancake breakfast after the race.

So many more stories, memories, and places I've been. Some races I haven't thought about in years or have completely forgotten, but would like to go back and do again. One of these days I need to go through everything and organize all of it. I'd probably need a museum if I saved everything over an entire lifetime.

Running Appreciation Week

In my mind, this week should have been called Running Appreciation Week.

I got the best of everything this week, and I finally started feeling better, sort of like I'm running, instead of slogging. It's been nice to run distances that normal people run, and not feel like I have to do anything long, yet. I'll build up over the next month or two, but for now I'm really enjoying running 10 miles or less most days.

I don't talk race strategy much on this blog, mostly because I don't race much. But this year I've been prepping for some faster running. I think at some point it hits you, when you're nearing 50, that the speed you were gifted with might not be around too much longer, so better get out there and do something with it while you still can.

Not that you can't run fast when you're older, but realistically, the PRs get harder to come by, and I see some opportunities to improve on some distances that I never put my efforts into. Now or never. Let's just say I'm getting a head start on age 50, which is only one year and 7 months away.

I ran a 10 mile tempo run with Shannon on Wednesday, did some short, easy runs with strides this week, never went over 9 miles on my easy days, and ran a 5K today, and tomorrow I will be running a total of 16.3 miles, or 26.2 K, as part of a challenge that Shannon started, to run that distance on the day of one of the Olympic marathons.

The distance coincides perfectly with the timing to do my first long run. The phrases "16 miles" and "long run" don't normally go together in my world, but this fall, they will.

In the tempo run we were lucky to not have blazing heat. I ran okay, 8:40s, which are decent for me for a start. I'd like to get those well under 8 minute pace this fall, but I'll get there.

The 5K was the Run for Hope, a fundraiser for Carcinoid Cancer awareness. I've run it in the past but not hard. This time I wanted to push myself and get an idea of where my fitness is, so I can see my progress throughout this fall as I attempt to get faster.

I ended up running a very well-paced 23:10, a time which is adequate for a start. First mile split 7:26, mile 2 was 15:04. Not bad. What was interesting was that I placed 10th overall among women. Probably because the Wild West Relay is going on this weekend and there weren't as many fast people around town. But I was 7th in my age group, which means 7 out of the 10 fastest women including me, were ages 40-49. And I was the oldest of all of them, most of them were 40 or 42, with one 45 year old.

The thing is, this year I have run 4 5Ks, all between 22:43 and 23:20. That time is getting old. I haven't trained specifically to get faster at any distance except 100 miles, so it's hard to judge 5K times against that type of training. So, next weekend I am going to run another local 5K and see if I can get just a little faster. The Rat Race, in Ault. It's across I-25 from Fort Collins. Exciting stuff.

I do have a plan to run several more 5Ks, maybe a 10K (ouch- my least favorite distance these days), and a half-marathon or two over the next few months.

Where I hope all this is going, is a big 48 hour PR at Across the Years in December. The endurance thing is not the issue, it's my speed. I don't have to be fast to run for 2 days, but if I work on my speed, I can sustain a faster pace more easily when I'm just running easy. And that should, in theory, make me less fatigued after hours of running.

So that means part of my strategy this fall will be doing faster paced runs, but shorter distances. Fewer long long runs, and a lot of 20ish mile runs at a good pace.

I plan to take the old body for a test drive in Oklahoma in October at the 12 hour race at 24 The Hard Way, to see how it's all coming together. That race will also serve as one of two long long training runs, and everything else will be of the shorter, faster variety.

The only thing that I wish had been different this weekend was something that fell short, but only due to my own lack of foresight and planning. My husband went up to Gunnison to his old coach's 75th birthday celebration, and then I found out that a lot of the athletes I worked with when I was an assistant coach there in the late 80s were there too.

I just didn't make the connection, for some reason my brain pictured it as Dennis and a bunch of his old college buddies getting together and didn't connect myself with it. Maybe that's a hormonal brain thing too. Now I do regret missing it. But I did get to talk to a few of them on the phone and am now connected again so it will be easier to see some of them in the future.

We were all so fortunate to have lived and run up in Gunnison and Crested Butte back then. The places we went to do our runs, up Gold Creek, the West Elk area, Kebler Pass, Tincup, Taylor Park, Gothic, Alpine Tunnel, the quarries, Hartman's Rocks, I can't even remember all the names of the places but they were all so beautiful. And we got to see them like that before a lot of the big development came to the area around Crested Butte.

Not the least of which is that if I hadn't been living in Crested Butte in 1986 when Dennis was in Gunnison, we never would have met, almost 26 years ago to the day (August 6, 1986) when I won my first 5K ever and also met Dennis for the first time.

Anyway I feel very fortunate to have had those experiences. It was awesome to see the pictures Dennis sent me of everyone, I am so thrilled that these women all look so fit and have stayed so healthy in their 40s! They really look fantastic and it's nice to see that despite the intensity of competitive running they did when they were younger, they all managed to incorporate fitness into their lives since college.

Some of them now have children who are entering college, which is a little mind-blowing. But it has been 25 years since those days when they were on the team and I was an assistant coach. Unbelievable.

Back to running appreciation week, I love it when I have these moments, even after running for 30 years, that I can look back and see where I've been, and all the amazing people I've known, and realize more than ever that running has been the best thing, ever.

Rant: Running for the Long Haul

I feel a rant coming on.

Maybe it's lack of sleep but at this point I only owe the sleep bank three hours, so that's probably not it. It's not PMS either. I feel this need to say something, because I am concerned about some of the runners in my life (at least three at this moment) whom I care about and I want to see them continue being able to run. But this applies to almost any woman runner, and a lot of men too.

So consider this a rant coming from a place of kindness, and caring, and concern. Here it goes:

Ultras are a gift to the body, not a punishment. I totally disagree with the "that's crazy, let's do it" mentality. I don't do ultras because I'm daring myself. I don't do them to beat the crap out of my body. I do them for the enjoyment and what I get from them, which are unique experiences shared with other unique human beings that I hope I'll be able to continue to have for a long time.

I've been running for nearly 27 years, ultras for 20 years. As long as I'm physically able, I intend to continue this.

I could care less about where I place in the pack. I have no interest in being competitive anymore. Interestingly, I still place pretty high at times, when I have a good race, without trying. I certainly don't plan on it, but I seem to hit those good races more often than a noncompetitive runner would expect to.

People say to me all the time,"I don't know how you find the time to train for ultras."

"I could never put in that kind of mileage."

"Marathon training is so painful, I could never imagine training for ultras."

"How does your body hold up?"

Hmmmmm. How does that work? Let's think about this together.

I averaged 48 miles a week prior to the Keys 100 for 4 months. I finished in 26 hours and change.
I averaged 47 miles a week prior to the Lean Horse 100 for 3 1/2 months. I finished in 28 hours and change.
Wanna see my weekly mileage trend from the Keys to Lean Horse?

Here it is, in chronological order, starting with the week after the Keys 100 race.
week 1: 6 miles of running, 14 miles of walking
week 2: ran 33 miles
week 3: ran 36 miles
week 4: ran 38 miles
week 5: ran 50 miles
week 6: ran 75 miles (including a 30 mile training run)
week 7: ran 70 miles (including a slow Leadville Marathon in 7 1/2 hours)
week 8: ran 19 miles (worked, then on vacation in Phoenix, traveled to Death Valley)
week 9: ran 10 miles (in Death Valley for Badwater, caught up on sleep afterwards)
week 10: ran 85 miles (including a 50 mile training run)
week 11: ran 70 miles (including 5 x Rock Repeats for 22 miles)
week 12: ran 70 miles (including a 33 mile training run)
week 13: ran 41 miles (including 3x rock repeats for 13 miles)
week 14: ran 21 miles (week before Lean Horse)
week 15: Lean Horse week. Ran 106 miles total including the 100 mile race.

Only five of those 15 weeks were somewhat high mileage, and only because I did long runs those weeks. In the middle I took two weeks easy, since I was traveling and busy doing other things. Hardly obsessive.

There is so much more to life than training all the time. People think what I do is obsessive but really, I am about the least obsessive runner I know out of all my friends. I know how to get down to business when it's time to focus on a goal I've set, but I also know how to let go of the need to constantly pound out the miles.

This fall I plan to take September mostly off, with cycling as my cross training. If the weather doesn't cooperate, well too bad. I'll ride in the rain or I'll just take the day off.

Sure I plan to run Across the Years in late December and I'll get serious sometime in October, but I'm not going to worry about it. I'll do a couple of long training runs around Halloween and Thanksgiving, but other than that, regular mileage applies.

This week, after my race, I'll concentrate on letting my feet heal and not worry about fitness. I won't lose much in a week. Nothing noticeable anyway.

I can only run a lot of ultras for a couple of years before my mind and body tell me I need a break. Fortunately it's usually my mind first. I tend to get burned out on training all the time, I miss my other interests, I miss doing things with my family, and I feel like I need to back off so many hours of training and preparing to train and run races.

On the physical end of things, I have never had a stress fracture. Never missed a menstrual cycle due to low weight. Since starting ultras, any injury I've had is due to a mishap, like a sprained ankle, not due to overtraining.

And I eat. I carry a little extra weight, not so much because I eat, but because I do have thyroid issues, and to look at the body type of my ancestors, they were not fat, but short and solid, more of a muscular build as they got older.

Because I would rather have a few pounds extra for my bones as I get older, I don't worry obsessively about weight. Sure I'd love to feel light on my feet again and fit in my smaller running clothes, but that is less important to me than staying healthy. I am thankful that despite my increasing middle age vanity about things like hair color, I have never been one of those skinny at any cost people. Whenever I've been skinny, it's been because my thyroid is out of whack.

Sure I do think about weight and in the back of my mind I view my body image in the same way as nearly any woman brought up in this culture. I go back and forth in my own mind, thinking I'm too fat at times. Somehow I've managed to have some of my best running performances when I was at my heaviest weights. I've tried to re-train myself on those matters. And I've managed to avoid a lot of the pitfalls of being too skinny, not eating enough, and falling apart.

That's where the concern for my friends comes in. I see them making the common mistake of too many miles, not giving your body a break, thinking you feel good after a long race without allowing the healing that has to happen at a microscopic level in the soft tissues and bones to take place, the probable but unknown effects on your immune system, the risk for mental burnout, the cost to families and individual lives.

When you feel good now, it might be a function of your great fitness. But it can be tricky. Often runners say they felt great right before they got sick or injured. Feeling good now does not mean that all is good inside. The body has it's own wisdom and we can try to avoid it but eventually it will get us.

If runners are not able to cut back on miles or take necessary care of their bodies, they are running for something beyond the enjoyment of running, and it is most likely an addiction, and no, it's not a "good" addiction. It's just a different drug. And it's rooted in a fear, which is related to body image, fear of losing something youthful about appearance, fear of running a little slower, fear of having a little fat on the body or weighing a certain number of pounds, in the brainwashing so many women have endured.

Those fears lead to overtraining, fear of taking a break because they might gain weight. Fear of losing a little fitness, as if once it's gone, it will be gone forever.

Guess what, fitness is a renewable resource. It's like money. You can always find more of it, you just have to be motivated to get it.

I think about my health years from now, and I want to give myself the best chance possible to be one of those 80 year old ultrarunners. There are enough pitfalls of getting older, some of which we can't control. But I want to make damn sure my bones hold up in order to do it, and that is something I can control.

Less is more.

End of rant.