When an athlete does ultra running – or takes part in the Tour De France, does he not know about the pain that event will cause? of course he does.

Then why does he do it?

Well it is like meditation. When you start doing meditation for the first time, it becomes very difficult to control the mind. Not impossible, but difficult. Various thoughts appear. You then remember what your guru told you – let the thoughts come and go, just do not process them. Then you feel sleepy.

Now fighting with thoughts is not possible, so you need to ignore it. However if you ignore sleep, you will go to sleep. So sleep has to be tackled in a different way – you need to wash your face, go for a small walk and then come again.

Similar is the case with training for an ultra event. An ultra event is when you run say 50km in say 5 hours.

You will find pain in the body, then you will find hunger, thirst,…

The body learns to conquer all this – just like meditation. Then once you have conquered hunger, quenched thirst and embraced being tired……you win.

So the ultra runner/ cyclist is doing a meditation – of the physical kind. I guess both types of meditation need a certain level of madness to be at the top.

Only good thing is: both are possible to do.