Refuse to leave the field

​This Saturday, I'm running a 24-hour race. I have two main goals. I want to run further and for longer than I ever have. Right now that is 37 miles and 13 1/2 hour respectively.

I love endurance running, even though it's possible you won't catch me actually saying that in the middle of an endurance run itself.

For sure, there's a physical component to endurance running. You can't just show up to an event without ever having run and try to run 37 miles. At least not without risking injury or worse 😮. But more than sharpening physical stamina, endurance running sharpens the mind.

This particular race is a loop race. This means every 3.4 miles - the length of this trail loop - I'll have the chance to quit. Every 3.4 miles, I'll have the chance to ask myself how bad do you want your goals while life tries to talk me out of them. Every 3.4 miles, I'll have a choice - walk off the field or keep playing.

Rich Roll calls himself a grinder. Someone who just keeps showing up each day to do the work. And long after everyone else is done working - he just keeps grinding at it.

In many ways, I think I'm a grinder too. I don't think I'm without talent; I thank God for the gifts I've been given in life. But I don't have a talent that's more useful to my life than my commitment to grinding - to refusing to quit.

If someone were to ask me today, what's your greatest accomplishment in life, I'd quickly say that I've refused to quit on life. In the face of days that have made grinding hard, seemingly not worth it, I've chosen to grind more.

I've tried to be the man who refuses to leave the field.

There are days I know we all feel lost. I know there are days when our actual destination in life seems blurry at best. It's those days when we can't see where we're going that continuing to go can seem the hardest. It's those days when we don't know all the answers that the questions seem to be winning.

On those days I encourage you - and me - to cling to one answer.

Refuse to leave the field.