In his book Between a Rock and a Hard Place (the movie version is 127 hours starring James Franco) Aaron Ralston described being trapped for several days against a canyon wall with his forearm crushed by a giant boulder. Using his own knowledge (he’s a mechanical engineer), he tried to device a lift to get rid of the huge stone. He also tried to hack parts of the giant boulder using his dull knife, thinking that it would crack on its own where he could break it apart easily. Unsuccessful and with no rescuers around, he thought he would die soon and so he decided to write an epitaph showing his birth date and his assumed date of death. With limited resources, he was also forced to drink his own urine. Finally on the 5^th day, upon realizing that it would take time before rescuers could find him, he cut his own arm using a dull knife to set himself free.

The decision to cut his arm clearly saved his life as he was able to escape the deep canyon border and was rescued by the authorities. The question is, what triggered him to do it? Apparently, during one of the nights of his imprisonment he suffered some form of hallucination – one of which was he saw himself playing with a 3 year old kid which he felt as if it was his son. He could “feel”,”see”,”hear” his kid playing with him as he carried him in his shoulder. That episode which he called trance gave him some sort of a boost to be alive. Hence-the cutting of the arm episode.

Last Sunday, we saw runners finishing 160km Bataan Death March Ultramarathon race. Some of my former BDM 102km classmates leveled up and joined that race. It got me thinking what was the trigger that gave them a boost to finish it. There must be some sort of mental battle going on their mind and hopefully, in the future we’ll be able to determine what it is and how they were able to conquer it. Yeah I know 160km is physically difficult, but reality is, in longer races like this one, the battle is in the mind.

Anyway, so much for this. The purpose of this post is to congratulate these people (sila tlaga ang star ngayon ok). Head over to BaldRunner’s blog to know who they are. I salute these people who even have the guts to start. I have lots of respect for a few who, even though they know for themselves they won’t be able to finish the race within cut-off time (30hours), they still continued to finish what they’ve started. And for those who dnf’ed, watch out for these guys. They will surely kick-ass with revenge in the future.

As for me? Barring any unforeseen circumstances, I will be there for the next edition. As per Mark’s FB status “I now only have 12 months to train before the 2nd BDM 100-mile! ”. Hahahaha!

Cong to all of you!!

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