Weather systems are stupid

I knew it was too good to last. The weather has been beautiful until almost the end of November, and even though I know that it is unrealistic, a little part of me thought that maybe it would stay nice all winter. It finally broke yesterday, as I woke up to sleet tapping at the window and the wind howling. Here come the runs in single-digit temperatures, the runs where you get done and you have icicles on your eyebrows. Here comes the depression brought on by not seeing the sun for three months. You tend to lose all track of what day it is or what time it is, as it gets dark at four o'clock every day.

But there are good parts of winter too, few as they may be.

One thing is the times when cabin fever sets in and I get a little loopy from being inside for too long and decide to go for a run at night. It's great to run through the town lit up only by the yellow glow of streetlights, with the sounds of traffic muffled by the falling snow as I run along silently. It's things like this that do a little toward keeping my sanity through terrible northeast winters.

Other than that I can't wait until global warming really starts kickin' in and Cortland is beachfront property.

Stay Hungry

There is simply no way for a person to succeed in endurance sports without some sort of intrinsic motivation. If you are a runner or cyclist or whatever, you can't be in it just to win some medals and get some prize money. If that is your state of mind, you'll burn out and quit within a couple of months, maybe even sooner. There has to be that burning hunger in you to see how far you can take your body and your mind. It is that hunger that tears you out of bed on cold mornings to go run, it's that hunger that makes you get back at training after you're injured, and you lose all the fitness you've suffered so hard to gain, it's that hunger that keeps you going through the terrible days out there on the road when all you want to do is stop.

That hunger is a tough thing to keep up all the time, and lots of things can threaten to satisfy it. Even success, the very thing that you strive and train for can take your hunger away, which seems counterintuitive, but in my experience, the hardest thing to do is to keep focused after success.

The key is to stay angry, stay insulted by all the people that think you can't do it, stay focused, stay cut throat.

Stay hungry boys and girls.