Quotes from Matt Fitzgerald

How interesting it is that the attitude that ultrarealists choose to adopt in situations where their attitude is the only thing they can control is one of finding meaning in their suffering.

Interpreting running as an opportunity to discover and become his best self, and to give his best to others, through the relentless pursuit of toughness, or guts—a kind of courage.

eating enough carbohydrate every day will allow you to train harder, better absorb the stress of your training, and perform better in important workouts than you would without adequate carbohydrate intake.

Your physical capacities are only part of the big picture," he told the gathering. "If your spirit is happy and strong, then you're stable under pressure.

Beet juice is rich in dietary nitrates, which are precursors for nitric oxide, a chemical that the body uses to cause blood vessels to dilate. Consuming beet juice before exercise increases vasodilatation and blood flow and reduces the oxygen cost of exercise. These

If you want to get a sense of what a very high level of perceived effort feels like in isolation from fatigue, find a steep hill and run up it as fast as you can. (You should probably warm up first.) That feeling of trying as hard as you can that hits you immediately, before fatigue sets in, is the feeling of a very high level of perceived effort.

Molly almost goes out of her way to describe how loving and supportive her parents have always been, emphasizing in particular the fact that, while she was growing up, her mom couldn't have cared less whether Molly ran or didn't run, and if she ran, whether she ran well or poorly, as long as she was happy.

Interestingly, slushie ingestion not only delayed the point at which the subjects reached a critically high core body temperature, but also allowed a higher tolerable core body temperature before exhaustion was reached. In other words, the slushie let them start colder and get hotter.

More often, they insist that their advantage lies not in having more to give but rather in being able to give more of what they have.

Physical fitness determines where the wall that represents your physical limit is placed. Mental fitness determines how close you are able to get to that limit in competition.

mainly by increasing tolerance for perceived effort and by reducing the amount of effort that is perceived at any given intensity of exercise.

I call these lifelines: little mantras that come to me spontaneously in the crisis moments of races -- attempts by The Person I Want to Be to gain my weaker side's acceptance of the pain I am inflicting on myself.

In reality, the scenario I've just described could never happen. Perceived effort is essentially the body's resistance to the mind's will. The fitter an athlete becomes, the less resistance the body puts up. Therefore increased physical capacity is always felt.

people often choose to expect the worst of an upcoming experience in hopes of creating a more favorable contrast between their expectations and reality.

Science has shown that mass below the knee is very costly in terms of its effect on running economy.

If you accept as fact that the only limitations you ever encounter in your sport are mental, then you will become a better fire walker, creeping closer to your unreachable physical limit than you would otherwise

Raising it overhead, she stepped over the threshold wearing a smile of total, ecstatic fulfillment. "This is the greatest moment of my life!

runners with very heavy training loads need more carbohydrate than runners with more moderate training loads. The more you train, the more carbs your body uses, and the more carbohydrate your body uses, the more carbs you need to eat to maintain adequate muscle glycogen stores.

Because the only way to become really good at coping with the discomforts and stresses of endurance sports is to experience them.

If I was ever going to win Ironman, I was going to have to beat the man who rinsed his cottage cheese

Body weight is the enemy of running performance. Running is, after all, a continuous fight against gravity. With every stride you take your body must be lifted completely off the ground, because all of the progress you make when running is made while your body is airborne. What's

What's more, your body also must be accelerated forward with every stride because it loses momentum upon each foot landing. The

Afterward, AR50 race director Julie Fingar pulled me aside and explained to me that the whole reason ultrarunners become ultrarunners is that they're too slow to qualify for Boston.

Beets are a flavorful, versatile vegetable with a very high concentration of a class of antioxidants known as betalains. Research has shown that betalains have uniquely powerful anti-inflammatory properties, so they help athletes with postworkout recovery.