Shot By Brock

Rilke said “the purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.” This may sound a little, well, defeatist, but what he means is that in order to fulfil our potential, to see what we’re capable of, we need to face those challenges that seem insurmountable, and keep facing them until we overcome them. And then, with the grit that we have obtained from that challenge, we move on to the next, bigger challenge. And so on, and so on. This isn’t an easy philosophy to adopt, especially given the hardships of life, in this increasingly difficult and confusing world that we’ve created for ourselves. But how do we know who we really, or what we’re really capable of, unless we face life, face our challenges, and choose not to let them own us, but to keep pushing forward, to keep getting stronger and more determined, until we own them. Last week we spoke to professional ultra runner Kieran Alger, in the first of a two-part podcast about ultrarunning or, to be more specific, about how we can go ultra in ou