Quotes from Matt Fitzgerald

For the only time homeostasis fails is when we are no longer alive.

This isn't how I would have chosen my life to turn out at all, but maybe this is my way of fulfilling my life's purpose and trying to raise awareness for these rare diseases that really do actually need it.

The same willingness to face reality that allows certain athletes to accept a negative turn of events also helps them bear what must be borne to address the bad situation.

For the ultrarealist, goals exist not to be achieved but to stimulate striving and to drive progress toward the fulfillment of potential. This is why champions set goals that are hard to achieve, and why they welcome opportunities to raise their game.

I beat cancer, I had kids, and I did this with a disability. You couldn't knock me off that mountaintop.

A girl need not necessarily have the perfect start in life to fulfill such a dream.

Running too hard too often is the single most common and detrimental mistake in the sport.

His key insight was that yearning, or wishing things were different than they are, is the root of all suffering, and that letting go of this desire is the secret to happiness.

There are two types of nutrition that have the potential to significantly enhance performance when consumed during running: water and carbohydrate. It is no accident that these are the two main ingredients in almost all sports drinks intended for use during exercise. Most

The less we choose to need, and the less we rely on comfortable, favorable circumstances for peace of mind, the more control we have over our thoughts, emotions, and behavior. "Pain is the purifier," he taught. "Walk towards suffering. Love suffering. Embrace it.

As with post-traumatic growth, it's not the scare itself but the subsequent perspective shift that enhances gratitude.

I'm scared shitless." Knowing and accepting that a few things were bound to go wrong.

unless a runner is systematically held back, he will more often than not run too hard on easy days and unwittingly sabotage his training plan.

That it's possible. You just have to fight. It will not be easy. But you can manage. Because life is giving you as much pain as you are capable [of living] with. And on the end of that path, the goal will be reachable. You will have suffered to do [it], but it doesn't matter.

That desperate tug-of-war between the desire to persevere and the overwhelming temptation to quit. And he loved it.

It was a very hard race from the word go with a combination of great runners and a tough course," he wrote. "I had my problems winning. I felt several times like giving into the pain and letting Gary [sic] win but I just couldn't. I just kept driving myself harder and harder, longer and longer.

The six steps that the highest-performing athletes most often take to attain their racing weight are by definition the most effective weight-management methods for endurance athletes because the objective of weight management in endurance sports is better performance

Becoming a more skillful and efficient runner is more like growing a beard than it is like chopping wood.

runners throughout the first half of the twentieth century generally avoided drinking anything during long races because they believed that submitting to their thirst would cause them to become "waterlogged" and slow down. One expert of the time wrote, "Don't get in the habit of drinking and eating in a Marathon race; some prominent runners do, but it is not beneficial.

Achieve complete mastery of his mind by pushing back the limits of his capacity to suffer until those limits disappeared.

This pain and suffering. This was my trophy ceremony.

Exercising mental fitness was a daily battle for him, but a battle he chose.

Frankl focused his psychologist's eye on ultrarealists he encountered in these awful places, writing that "the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement," which proved that "any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him—mentally and spiritually.

What matters is that the unconscious brain knows when the body is capable of achieving the goals of the conscious mind and communicates this knowledge to consciousness in the form of the feeling of confidence. Therefore, the primary objective of training for every competitive runner should be to develop confidence in her ability to achieve her race goals.