Virtues are habits and firm
dispositions to do good. The word virtue
is from the Latin virtus: virility, strength of character. Fortitude is a firmness of will in doing good
in spite of difficulties faced. To put
it plainly, I think of it as overcoming fear. You might become a pretty good ultrarunner if
you have a well developed sense of fortitude.
Anyone who is willing to toe the line at a tough run of 30, 50, or even
100 miles has hopefully spent some time developing this virtue. In fact, I think that is one of the major
aspects of training for and racing the longer distances – to know it might be
really awful at some point but to do it anyway. Fortitude is something that most runners
develop through their training. In fact,
it happens naturally as our long run increases and as our weekly mileage
grows. We run longer and more difficult
races. The distances that used to scare
us don’t keep us awake quite as much the night before. The interesting thing is that a lot of this
transfers over to the rest of our lives and we learn to “be not afraid.”
The virtue of patience is a
form of the moral virtue of fortitude. Knowing
that, you might think that patience involves just getting tougher and enduring whatever
comes along. The distinctive mark of
patience, though, is that it involves bearing the difficulty caused by another
person or situation. So, instead of
overcoming fear, we are now talking about dealing with situations we don’t like
very much - and maybe even seeing the joy in that. We can grow in this virtue by learning not to
complain to ourselves and others, to use hardships as a way to progress in this
virtue, and maybe even desire difficulties as a source of growth in patience.
Most runners I have met tend
to get fortitude down pretty well.
Patience is sometimes another story.
Part of this is just a symptom of our culture. We are a very time-impatient society. We want something right away, on our
schedule. My shoe order said free 2-day
shipping, and my shoes are taking 3 days to get here. I’m thinking of the finish line, and maybe I
should just focus on the next aid station.
If something doesn’t go just right in my race, does that mean it’s over?
What if I tried to accept it and deal with it…what if I maybe even welcomed
it…what if I was grateful for the difficulty?
My own struggle has been
when my sense of fortitude leads to impatience.
For a while, that involved dealing with a setback in training. My sense of fortitude made me initially say, “No
big deal…that pain will go away,” followed by something dumb along the lines of,
“I’m sure I can just run through it and then it will go away once I start to
taper.” This kind of thinking led to
having to back out of two goal races I really wanted to run. In the end, it is only through patience that
I am really able to heal. Truly backing
off and starting over has made me grow in patience and is also making me a
stronger runner and person. The whole
thing reminds me of some advice I got from a veteran ultrarunner before I ran
my first ultra. They told me simply,
“Don’t try to push too hard and make things happen. Relax, let the miles come to you. If something comes up (and it will), just be
patient and deal with it.” That has been
some of the best advice I have ever received.
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