Scott Jurek quotes

We move forward, but we must stay in the present. (Scott Jurek)
The point was living with grace, decency, and attention to the world, and breaking free of the artificial constructs in your own life.
Scott Jurek
Rational assessments too often led to rational surrenders.
Scott Jurek
Nature's arena has a way of humbling and energizing us.
Scott Jurek
We all lose sometimes. We fail to get what we want. Friends and loved ones leave. We make a decision we regret. We try our hardest and come up short. It's not the losing that defines us. It's how we lose. It's what we do afterward.
Scott Jurek
We strive toward a goal, and whether we achieve it or not is important, but it's not what's most important. What matters is how we move toward that goal.
Scott Jurek
It's a hard, simple calculus: Run until you can't run anymore. Then run some more. Find a new source of energy and will. Then run even faster.
Scott Jurek
Every single one of us possesses the strength to attempt something he isn't sure he can accomplish. It can be running a mile, or a 10K race, or 100 miles. It can be changing a career, losing 5 pounds, or telling someone you love her.
Scott Jurek
I'm healthier and I can run longer and faster because I eat a plant-based diet. But I don't preach to my carnivorous friends or lambaste anyone who eats a baked potato slathered with butter and sour cream. Anyone who pays attention to what they eat and how it affects them will naturally move toward plants - and toward health.
Scott Jurek
I worried that my vegan diet might fail me. I worried that I'd run out of energy. I worried that the heat might prove too much. True, I wasn't as sore as I had been before going to a plant-based diet, and my recovery time was faster than ever. True, I almost never got congested, and whenever a cold or flu swept through Seattle, sending a lot of other runners to bed, I stayed healthy. And of course, I had battled Mount Si and prevailed, if a man could be said to prevail. I had also gone to California a week earlier and trained every day in the 100-degree canyons. But if you can imagine running 100 miles, you can imagine almost anything.
Scott Jurek
To run 100 miles and more is to bring the body to the point of breaking, to bring the mind to the point of destruction, to arrive at that place where you can alter your consciousness. It was to see more clearly. As my yoga teacher would say, "Injuries are our best teachers.” I'm convinced that a lot of people run ultramarathons for the same reason they take mood-altering drugs. I don't mean to minimize the gifts of friendship, achievement, and closeness to nature that I've received in my running career. But the longer and farther I ran, the more I realized that what I was often chasing was a state of mind - a place where worries that seemed monumental melted away, where the beauty and timelessness of the universe, of the present moment, came into sharp focus. (Scott Jurek)
Ultrarunners - even the fiercest competitors - grow to love each other because we all love the same exercise in self-sacrifice and pursuit of transcendence. Because that's what we're all chasing - that "zone” where we are performing at the peak of our abilities. That instant when we think we can't go on but do go on. We all know the way that moment feels, how rarely it occurs, and the pain we have to endure to grab it back again. The longer an ultrarunner competes, I believe, the more he grows to love not only the sport, not only his fellow ultrarunners, but people in general. We all struggle to find meaning in a sometimes painful world. Ultrarunners do it in a very distilled version.
Scott Jurek
The potential of the human body is immense. You can come out of some of the deepest, darkest holes if you keep pressing forward.
Scott Jurek