CONQUER YOUR LIMITS – Push Beyond Pain & Dominate Life (David Goggins)
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We know life can be hard and yet we feel sorry for ourselves when it isn't fair. From this point forward, accept the following as Goggins laws of nature. You will be made fun of. You will feel insecure. You may not be the best all the time. You may be the only black, white, Asian, Latino, female,

male, gay, lesbian, or in a given situation. There will be times when you feel alone. Get over it. Our minds are strong. They are our most powerful weapon, but we have stopped using them. We have access to so many more resources today than ever before. And yet we are so much less capable than those who came before us.

If you want to be one of the few to defy those trends in our ever-softening society, you will have to be willing to go to war with yourself and create a whole new identity, which requires an open mind. It's funny, being open-minded is often tagged as new age or soft. Being open-minded enough to find a way is old school. It's what knuckle-draggers do, and that's exactly what I did.

I borrowed my friend Stokes' bike, he also graduated in class 235. And instead of running to work, I rode there and back every day. There was an elliptical trainer in the brand new SEAL Team 5 gym and I hit it once and sometimes twice a day with five layers of clothes on. Death Valley heat scared the shit out of me. So I simulated it. I suited up in three or four pairs of sweatpants, a few pullover sweatshirts, a hoodie,

and a fleece hat all sealed up in a Gore-Tex shell. After two minutes on the elliptical, my heart rate was at 170 and I stayed at it for two hours at a time. Before or after that, I'd hop on the rowing machine and bang out 30,000 meters, which is nearly 20 miles. I never did anything for 10 or 20 minutes. My entire mindset was ultra. It had to be. Afterward, I could be

Seen wringing my clothes out like I just soaked them in a river Most of the guys thought I was whacked out but my old bud s instructor SPG can loved it that spring I was tasked as a land warfare instructor for seals at our base in Neyland, California a sorry scrap of Southern California desert its trailer parks rampant with unemployed meth heads drugged out drifters

who filtered through the disintegrating settlements on the Salton Sea and an inland body of water 60 miles from the Mexico border were our only neighbors. Whenever I passed them on the street while out on a 10-mile ruck

They'd stare like I was an alien that had materialized into the real world from one of their speed-addled vision quests. Then again, I was dressed in three layers of clothes and a Gore-Tex jacket in peak 100 degree heat. I did look like some evil messenger from the way out beyond. By then, my injuries had become manageable, and I ran 10 miles at a time, then hiked the hills around Nyland for hours, weighed down with a 50-pound ruck.

The team guys I was training considered me an alien being too. And a few of them were more frightened of me than the meth heads. They thought something had happened to me on the battlefield out in that other desert where war wasn't a game. What they didn't know was the battlefield for me was my own mind. I drove back out to Death Valley to train and did a 10 mile run in a sauna suit. That motherfucker was hot as balls.

but I had the hardest race in the world ahead of me and I'd run a hundred miles twice. I knew how that felt and the prospect of having to take on an additional 35 miles petrified me. Sure, I talked a good game, projected all kinds of confidence and raised tens of thousands of dollars, but part of me didn't know if I had what it took to finish the race. So I had to invent barbaric PT to give myself a chance.

It takes a lot of will to push yourself when you are all alone. I hated getting up in the morning knowing what the day held for me. It was very lonely, but I knew that on the bad water course, I'd reach a point where the pain would become unbearable and feel insurmountable.

Maybe it would be at mile 50 or 60, maybe later, but there would be a time when I'd want to quit and I had to be able to slay the one-second decisions in order to stay in the game and access my untapped 60%. During all the lonely hours of heat training,

I started to dissect the quitting mind and realized that if I was going to perform close to my absolute potential and make the Warrior Foundation proud, I'd have to do more than answer the simple questions as they came up. I'd have to stifle the quitting mind before it gained any traction at all, before I ever asked myself why. I'd need my cookie jar on recall to convince me that despite what my body was saying, I was immune to suffering.

because nobody quits an ultra race or hell week in a split second. People make the decision to quit hours before they ring that bell. So I needed to be present enough to recognize when my body and mind were starting to fail in order to short circuit the impulse to look for a way out long before I tumbled into that fatal funnel.

Ignoring pain or blocking out the truth like I did at the San Diego one day would not work this time and if you are on the hunt for your 100% you should catalog your weaknesses and vulnerabilities. Don't ignore them. Be prepared for them because in any endurance event, in any high stress environment, your weaknesses will surface like bad karma, build in volume and overwhelm you unless you get ahead of them first. Jack fucking shit. Bad water has a staggered start.

Rookies started at 6 a.m. Veteran runners had an 8 a.m. start and the true contenders wouldn't take off until 10 a.m. Which put them in Death Valley for peak heat. Chris Costman was one hilarious son of a bitch. But he didn't know he'd given one hard motherfucker a serious tactical advantage. Not me. I'm talking about Akos Konya.

Akos and I met up the night before at the Furnace Creek Inn where all the athletes stayed. He was a first-timer too, and he looked a hell of a lot better since the last time we saw one another. Despite his issues at the Hurt 100 , I knew Akos was a stud, and since we were both in the first group, I let him pace me through the desert. Bad call. For the first 17 miles, we were side by side.

and we looked like an odd couple. Akos is a 5'7", 122-pound Hungarian. I was the biggest man in the field at 6'1", 195 pounds, and the only black guy too. Akos was sponsored and dressed in a colorful branded getup. I wore a torn gray tank top, black running shorts, and streamlined Oakley sunglasses. My feet and ankles were wrapped in compression tape and stuffed into broken-in but still springy running shoes.

I didn't wear Navy SEAL gear or Warrior Foundation garb. I preferred to go incognito. I was the shadow figure filtering into a new world of pain. Although Akko set a fast pace, the heat didn't bother me, partly because it was early and because I'd heat trained so well. We were the two best runners in the 6 a.m. group by far, and when we passed the Furnace Creek Inn at 8.40 a.m.,

Some of the runners from the 10:00 AM group were outside, including Scott Jurek, the defending champion, Badwater record holder, and an ultra legend. He must have known we were making great time, but I'm not sure he realized that he just glimpsed his stiffest competition. Not long after, Akos put some space between us, and at mile 26, I started to realize that once again, I went out way too fast. I was dizzy and lightheaded, and I was dealing with GI issues.

Translation, I had to shit on the side of the road, all of which stemmed from the fact that I was severely dehydrated. My mind spun with dire prognosis after dire prognosis, excuses to quit piled up one after another. I didn't listen. I responded by taking care of my dehydration issue and pounding more water than I wanted.

I went through the Stovepipe Wells checkpoint at mile 42 at 1:30, 1:00 p.m., a full hour after Akos. I'd been on the race course for over seven and a half hours and was almost exclusively walking by then. I was proud just to have made it through Death Valley on my feet. I took a break, went to a proper bathroom, and changed my clothes. My feet had swollen more than I'd expected, and my right big toe had been chafing the side of the shoe for hours, so stopping felt like sweet relief.

I felt the bloom of a blood blister on the side of my left foot, but I knew better than to take off my shoes. Most athletes size up their shoes to run bad water, and even then they cut out the big toe side panel to create space for swelling and to minimize chafing. I did not, and I had 90 more miles ahead of me. I hiked the entire 18-mile climb to Town Pass at 4,850 feet.

As predicted, the sun dropped as I crested the pass. The air cooled and I pulled on another layer. In the military, we always say we don't rise to the level of our expectations. We fall to the level of our training. And as I hiked up the winding highway with my blister barking, I fell into the same rhythm I'd find on my long rucks in the desert around Nyland.

I wasn't running, but I kept a strong pace and covered a lot of ground. I stuck to my script, ran the entire nine mile descent and my quads paid the price. So did my left foot. My blister was growing by the minute. I could feel it verging on hot air balloon status. If only it would burst through my shoe like an old cartoon and continue to expand until it carried me into the clouds and dropped me onto the peak of Mount Whitney itself.

No such luck. I kept walking and aside from my crew, which included, among others, my wife, Kate was crew chief, and mother, I didn't see anybody else. I was on an eternal ruck, marching beneath a black dome sky glittering with starlight. I'd been walking for so long I expected a swarm of runners to materialize at any moment, then leave me in their wake. But nobody showed. The only evidence of life on planet pain

was the rhythm of my own hot breath, the burn of my cartoon blister, and the high beams and red tail lights of road trippers blazing trails through the California night. That is, until the sun was ready to rise and a swarm finally did arrive at mile one and ten. I was exhausted and dehydrated by then, glazed in sweat, dirt, and salt when horseflies began to dive bomb me one at a time.

Two became four, which became 10 and 15. They beat their wings against my skin, bit my thighs and crawled into my ears. This was biblical and it was my very last test. My crew took turns swatting flies off my skin with a towel. I was in personal best territory already. I'd covered more than 110 miles on foot and with only 25 miles to go, there was no fucking way these devil flies would stop me.

Would they? I kept marching and my crew kept swatting flies for the next eight miles. Since watching Akos run away from me after mile 17, I hadn't seen another bad water runner until mile 122 when Kate pulled up alongside me. Scott Jurek is two miles behind you, she said. We were more than 26 hours into the race and Akos had already finished, but the fact that Jurek was just now catching me meant my time must have been pretty damn good.

I hadn't run much, but all those Neyland rucks made my hiking stride swift and strong. I was able to power hike 15 minute miles and got my nutrition on the move to save time. After it was all over, when I examined the splits and finishing times of all the competitors, I realized my biggest fear, the heat, had actually helped me. It was the great equalizer. It made fast runners slow.

With Jurek on the hunt, I was inspired to give it everything I had as I turned onto Whitney Portal Road and started the final 13 mile climb. I flashed onto my pre-race strategy to walk the slopes and run the flats as the road switched back like a snake slithering into the clouds. Jurek wasn't pursuing me, but he was on the chase.

Akos had finished in 25 hours and 58 minutes, and Yurek hadn't been at his best that day. The clock was winding down on his effort to repeat as Badwater champion, but he had the tactical advantage of knowing Akos' time in advance. He also knew his splits. Akos hadn't had that luxury, and somewhere on the highway he'd stopped for a 30-minute nap. Yurek wasn't alone.

He had a pacer, a formidable runner in his own right named Dusty Olsen, who nipped at his heels. Word was Olsen ran at least 70 miles of the race himself. I heard them approach from behind, and whenever the road switched back, I could see them below me. Finally, at mile 128, on the steepest part of the steepest road in this entire f***ed up race, they were right behind me. I stopped running, got out of the way, and cheered them on.

Jurek was the fastest ultra runner in history at that point, but his pace wasn't electric that late in the game. It was consistent. He chopped down the mighty mountain with each deliberate step. He wore black running shorts, a blue sleeveless shirt, and a white baseball cap. Behind him, Olsen had his long shoulder-length hair corralled with a bandana. Otherwise, their uniform was identical. Jurek was the mule, and Olsen was riding him. Come on, Jureker!

"Come on, Yurker! This is your race," Olsen said as they passed me up. "No one is better than you! No one!" Olsen kept talking as they ran ahead, reminding Yurek that he had more to give. Yurek obliged and kept charging up the mountain. He left it all out on that unforgiving asphalt.

It was amazing to watch. Jurek wound up winning the 2006 edition of Badwater when he finished in 25 hours and 41 minutes. 17 minutes faster than Akos, who must have regretted his power nap. But that wasn't my concern. I had a race of my own to finish. Whitney Portal Road winds up a parched, exposed rock escarpment for 10 miles.

before finding shade in gathering stands of cedar and pine. Energized by Jurek and his crew, I ran most of the last seven miles. I used my hips to push my legs forward and every single step was agony. But after 30 hours, 18 minutes and 54 seconds of running, hiking, sweating and suffering, I snapped the tape to the cheers of a small crowd. I'd wanted to quit 30 times.

I had to mentally inch my way through 135 miles, but 90 runners competed that day and I came in fifth place. I plodded over to a grassy slope in the woods and lay back on a bed of pine needles as Kate unlaced my shoes. That blister had fully colonized my left foot. It was so big it looked like a sixth toe. The color and texture of cherry bubble gum. I marveled at it while she removed the compression tape from my feet.

Then I staggered to the stage to accept my medal from Kostman. I'd just finished one of the hardest races on planet Earth. I'd visualized that moment ten times at least and thought I'd be elated, but I wasn't. He handed me my medal, shook my hand, and interviewed me for the crowd. But I was only half there. While he spoke, I flashed to the final climb and a pass above 8,000 feet, where the view was unreal.

I could see all the way to Death Valley. Near the end of another horrible journey, I got to see where I came from. It was the perfect metaphor for my twisted life. Once again, I was broken, destroyed 20 different ways, but I'd passed another evolution, another crucible, and my reward was a lot more than a medal and a few minutes with Kaussmann's microphone. It was a whole new bar. I closed my eyes and saw Jurek and Olsen, Akos and Karl Meltzer,

All of them had something I didn't. They understood how to drain every last drop and put themselves in a position to win the world's most difficult races

And it was time to seek out that feeling for myself. I'd prepared like a madman. I knew myself and the terrain. I stayed ahead of the quitting mind, answered the simple questions and stayed in the race, but there was more to be done. There was still somewhere higher for me to rise. A cool breeze rustled the trees, dried the sweat from my skin and soothed my aching bones. It whispered in my ear and shared a secret which echoed in my brain like a drumbeat that wouldn't stop.

There is no finish line, Goggins. There is no finish line.