Eddie Pinero

It's been there when the finish line seemed impossibly far away.

And the idea kind of reoccurred to me perfectly a few days ago on a run up Pinnacle Peak, which is a duo of mountains about 20 minutes up the road from me.

Essentially, two connecting mountains.

You run up one and then down it, and it connects to the other mountain, which you run up and then down.

Once you've completed that, you kind of turn around and you just retrace those steps.

Up, down, up, down.

It takes about 40 minutes, and I've done it about 10 times now.

And the hardest part is what I've called climb three, right?

That's the point where you've run up, down, up, down.

You turn around to do it all again.

And it's technically your third ascent.

You know, the start of the journey back.

And it just so happens to be the steepest part of the climb and the longest part of the climb.

It feels like endless steps, right?

And as you can imagine, running uphill like that, your heart races and, you know, your lungs, they gasp for air.

And when you're in the thick of it, right, precisely in that moment, you know, you've already run halfway, you're exhausted, you know, your legs are starting to feel heavy.

And the thought of another 20 minutes, it's almost impossible to compartmentalize.

It feels overwhelming in totality.

Here's what I realized.

That feeling, that overwhelming sense of discomfort, you won't feel that the entire run.