Fear is what makes you come alive, the lure of the unknown - can I do this? - thats where the growth comes from, the pain. I dont remember the running effortlessly; I remember the hard times; adversity breathes transformation.

Every single one of us possesses the strength to attempt something he isn't sure he can accomplish.

We all lose sometimes. We fail to get what we want. Friends and loved ones leave. We make a decision we regret. We try our hardest and come up short. It's not the losing that defines us. It's how we lose. It's what we do afterward.

We move forward, but we must stay in the present.

Fear is what makes you come alive, the lure of the unknown - can I do this? - thats where the growth comes from, the pain. I dont remember the running effortlessly; I remember the hard times; adversity breathes transformation.

For me, challenging myself with this type of endeavor [ultramarathons] brings the best out in me because even at the darkest, deepest moments when I feel like I can't go on, when I feel like there's no chance I could break the record or much less finish the trail, somehow I find that strength inside of me.

But the longer and further I ran, the more I realized that what I was often chasing was a state of mind- a place where worries that seemed monumental melted away, where the beauty and timelessness of the universe, of the present moment, came into sharp focus.