Maryland Crabs - Rethinking Tradition

It seems to be that the food we eat reflects our consciousness and our reverence for life. Living in Maryland with summer approaching has many people thinking of crabs. Steamed crabs. Steamed alive. Everyone knows it and everyone ignores the fact because -1: everyone knows that crabs don't feel pain. 2: They're not cute and fuzzy. And 3: (and most importantly) they don't want to think about where their food comes from. It's sad. A living thing is cooked alive for fleeting pleasure. And people will joke about. Even sadder.
Crabs do feel pain. Many studies have now proved this.
And not giving thought to what we consume shows a frightening lack of reverence for life - our own the creatures we share this planet with.

Lets think before we eat.

Peace,
Eric

Holding Only You

You are no farther than
a thought away-
 yet I fill this distance
with a thousand words.

So I let go.


Allowing words to drop unspoken.


 Distance narrows.


And I fall to a silence
holding only
you.

 

 

 

 

~

Herman Melville wrote that "God's one and only voice is silence" and the wisdom of his prose has been played as a universal theme since the dawn of time. And yet in no other time perhaps has our inner world been so full of chatter and distraction. The voice of God seems more distance today then ever. My love for the forest and the trails and the utter exhaustion of a very long run stems in the falling away of my own ego driven conversations of self with myself to a single, one sided conversation of Self - God speaking through the expression of breath and motion, the internal mantra of Soham...the silent whisper...I am That and again the holy silence of our reply.

 

Peace,

Eric


Perfect

Another 100 in just after a month after my last failed attempt to reach this mileage - it will be tough. I may not be able to do. It doesn't matter. As we can ever do is try - try our best with what we have in the moment, in each moment followed by the next. From there is just a matter of letting go of results and allowing those moments that hold our best to unfold. Whatever happens next...is perfect.

Peace,
Eric

Ultra Thoughts

I feel a very strong urge to run the Mohican 100 Mile Endurance Run on June 15th. It may be too soon and it may not be the best option if I decide to run the Pine Creek 100 in September. Yet I feel the urge to run long and don't even truly care if I finish - I want to finish of course - but the urge to be on the trails and just move seem to be a more overwhelming desire. I want to streamline my race fueling so that I'm eating what is healthy and available and what I carry on myself. I may try Perpetuem again so that I am ensured calories and nutrition on the go and too fill the gap between dates, (Vega) gels and what I get at the aid stations.I want to run and walk and get in 100 miles in a single shot, or 60 miles or 80 - I want to just go.

Peace,
Eric

Recovery

Except for a calf issue that was a big reason for my dropping at the C&O 100 I felt in fairly good condition for having run 63 miles. Good enough to do some speed work on the treadmill two days later and do some light lifting the very next day (well, same day actually)
I really feel that keeping my diet clean during the race in addition to my regular vegan diet played a large role in this regard. A diet heavy in fruit is continuously hydrated and nourished and the digestive system is working at it's full capacity allowing energy to be spent on recovery and not the heavy load of digesting meat and toxic junk food. Most vegans will say likewise. T. Colin Campbell's new book - Whole - has just been released and I purchased it today. I'm looking forward to reading it and refining my diet even more for better results than ever!

Peace,
Eric

Self - Expression

While having Tea with a friend today she brought up her teenage daughters new piercing and we had a bit of a discussion about piercing and tattoos. I have both - several tattoos and my ear pierced since I was a teenager. I like all my tattoos and my ear ring. I also like multiple tattoos on people and multiple piercings as long as they don't stray into the area of self-mutilation. My friend comments that her daughter stated that she was only expressing herself - as we all long to do in some form or another. Yet this brought up an area of interest for me and is something I have given long thought too. Here it is - It's not the self that's being expressed through bodywork. It's the ego. Even the most spiritually themed tattoo is still just ego graffiti on the self's physical vehicle. The self is timeless, infinite and is always expressed through love, creativity and kindness. Once we attempt to place a label of any kind on the self and call it an expression we have already failed for the self IS expression and is beyond any concept in which the ego would seek to hold it. As the Tao Te Jing states - "the Tao which can be named is not the true Tao." So piercings are cool - tattoos are even cooler. But the self we wish to express with them - is not the true self.

Race Priority

So goals for a faster marathon may have to go on hold in order to keep training to complete a 100 mile ultra. It's more than an unfinished goal - it's something of myself I left incomplete on the trail. It doesn't need to be done but it needs to be tried. I may stumble into a marathon PR as a result of this training - speed work and tempo work will remain - but the focus now is on even more quality miles, work the kinks out of race day nutrition and mentally prepare myself for a very long day. It starts now.

Peace,
Eric