"The Extra Mile: One Woman's Personal Journey to Ultrarunning Greatness"
by Pam Reed
"Late night talk-show host and comedian David Letterman, who's a runner himself, is one of the few media personalities who's given attention to ultrarunning. In 2003, when I was the overall winner of Badwater for the second year in a row, David invited me to be a guest on his show. I thought he struck the perfect note of appeciation for what ultrarunners accomplish as well as amusement at what it involves. He asked me what I had won, what the prize was. I told him it was a belt buckle. "A belt buckle?" Reaching for a pad of paper and a pen, David leaned toward me and asked conspiratorially, "How can I get in on this?" p.5
"Even though I've done it now more times than I can remember, when I start thinking about running 50 or 100 miles, it seems like a long way-and it is a long way. Then I start running. Almost always, within the first few hours, a moment comes when I feel like I've made a huge mistake: "Pam, what were you thinking?!" But I keep going. Then time starts playing some really amazing tricks. It goes slow and fast at the same time. Although I never ask how long I've been running-and I never look at my watch even though, for some perverse reason, I always wear it-I do think about how much time has passed and how much is left. This is where it gets weird. Sometimes, at the same time what it seems as if I've been running forever, it also seems like time is passing incredibly quickly. Then I think that I've got to make the best use of every possible moment.
Then all of a sudden, the race is over. As slowly as it seemed to be going, it also seems like it was over in a flash. Hours of pain and fatigue are compressed into a single snapshot in my memory." p77-78
[So true of life, too! Time plays amazing tricks!]
