Power of One

The days are finally long enough to go longer but it just doesn't feel like I am going that far despite the miles that are racking up. As a dogged distance 'jogger', I still don't understand how I continue to build muscle and efficiency on this regime.
"It is better to be wrong than to simply follow convention," is advice given to the protagonist of The Power of One.
When it comes to running, I flout contemporary customs involving speedwork and run my own runs, all of the time. Five years into my return to running I remain uninjured, running probably an average of 55+ miles a week (some are less, some are more). This was not a strategy, but the way to keep myself keeping on, getting out the door.* When I plan smaller mileage days, I find I want to skip them. And I have learned that I can manage going long even when cramming back to back (to back to back) long runs. Though not a strategy, it is demonstrative of the behavior of a type: the "endurance monster." I find it funny how many many years it can take sometimes before I can gain the maturity to stop for a moment when pursuing an activity, step back, and lump myself into the extant categories others have made to define the activity. It is a certain blindness - not just independence of spirit - to not see where one might fit.
So often I ask: how can I improve my vision?
Mistakes, willful blindness - the years upon years help raise at least some of that fog. Puzzle pieces fit together in a new way. Subsurface purer sources of character swell up and rise to visibility, while other traits get burned away by the sun of days.
What I take from my running is getting through the grind. Persevering through a prescription of miles. And I put that towards keeping on keeping on in other areas of life, which I might in these latter days run from. I run in order to stay put. I don't strategize it, but it is part of my larger strategy.
The mind is the athlete; the body is simply the means it uses to run faster or longer, jump higher, shoot straighter, kick better, swim harder, hit further, or box better. Hoppie's dictum to me, "First with the head and then with the heart," was more than simply mixing brains with guts. It meant thinking well beyond the powers of normal concentration and then daring your courage to follow your thoughts.” ― Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One
*edit: I realized after writing this that I do have a strategy to my runs, so wrote about it.
 
Runs through the sun of days for spirit...
Brushes: watercolor cycle by chrisdesign, deviantart; sumi brush sample.

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