Something Big for the Mental Game!

I am to say the least a firm believer in the power of the mind over the body. I have had things happen in my life that can only be explained by the overwhelming ability of my mind to push beyond my perceived physical limits.

I could, if that were the focus here, list multiple incidents where I was able to do or overcome things mentally that were clearly not within my known physical limits. That, however is not the main focus here and so I'll leave that discussion and its details for another time.

What is the focus is my challenge to myself or my experiment over the next year. The more I study and learn the more I believe we have just barely even scratched the surface of what the human mind and body are capable of.

I believe that the limits as we know them today are a result largely of the collective knowledge we all deal with and then our observations of our world as compared to that collective knowledge.

In other words, if I were to set out to train for an ultra-marathon using collective knowledge, I would research everything that has been written on training for one, perhaps talk to some ultra runners and maybe even hire a coach to put me through a training program based on my current perceived level of fitness.

The traditional collective knowledge of sports training says that this is the best way to do things. That assumes that you and I believe that everything there is to be known about sports training and performance has already been learned and therefore we should just work within that collective knowledge base.

And of course if you know me, you're quite aware of the fact that I have a hard time excepting that as the truth. If I simply say that everything we know about running an ultra-marathon has already been learned, then quite frankly the goal I am about to share with you will seem absolutely ludicrous and ridiculous.

The goal?

• To run the Catalina Buffalo Run (50 miles) in January of 2010.

• To complete the run in under 8 hours.

If I was already running marathons in sub four hour times, it would seem like no big deal, right?

Tomorrow, I'll discuss why this is something you probably won't believe I can do and why I believe I can.

See you then!