Limits and Limitless

 By: Unknown    Sunday, February 16, 2014  Boston Marathon, college, david foster wallace, dfw, infintie jest, running, writing   No comments

"THE MAN WHO KNOWS HIS LIMITATIONS HAS NONE" - Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace

As an English student of occasionally the most pretentious variety, I've always wanted to study Infinite Jest at school. I spent the summer before freshman year trudging through the almost-1,100 pages, 388 footnotes, and I can only describe the experience as the best kind of overwhelming. DFW's ability to create the strangest, most captivating cast of characters, convey their interior states, and create his own world so similar (and frighteningly so) to our own is what makes this ambitious novel so successful. Reading Infinite Jest the first time is hilarious and disorienting -- the first 200 or so pages setting up the rest of the book at incredible speed. It's a test of will and attention: IJ requires tremendous trust on the reader's part. The separate stories may not connect clearly or even completely, but everything that the reader needs is in that book somewhere.

This semester I'm fortunate enough to be enrolled in Walking Infinite Jest, in which we're reading IJ and conducting site visits to discover DFW's Boston. Rereading IJ is a time-consuming but incredibly rewarding experience, and I'm already making new connections, tying up more stories, noticing more wonderful ideas. When slowly chugging along through my first assigned reading, I came to a footnote that referenced a mathematical theorem of Georg Cantor that states that between any two numbers, no matter how together they are, there are an infinite number of points. From this theorem comes the motto of the tennis academy in IJ: "The man who knows his limitations has none." During my first read through the book, I hardly noticed it. I had larger worries, like figuring out what the was going on, and who the hell was being introduced. 

Maybe it's because I can now focus more on the language of IJ itself than the plot, or maybe it's because I'm at some meaningful point in my life, but there's something about that idea that has stuck with me these past few weeks. It seems almost inconceivable that no matter how something is bounded, between its limits there is an infinite number of things. As someone involved in a competitive sport and attending a competitive school, pushing your limits seems like the only thing you can do to get to the top. Want that PR or that BQ? Everything tells you that your mileage needs to be higher or the intensity of your workouts needs to increase. Your training schedule looks inflexible -- mileage goals and tempo runs and long runs and intervals already inalterable -- and rest days don't even seem like options. At school sleep sometimes gets deemphasized with readings and papers always due, with places to go and people to see. Pulling all nighters or staying up way-too-late doesn't always produce the desired results. You can sometimes succeed by defying limits, trying to push out the boundaries. Sometimes though you can just end up injured or exhausted or worse off.

Maybe instead of seeing success as breaking boundaries or transcending limits, we can see as triumphing within our confines. Our greatest successes cannot come from ignoring the natural boundaries of our mind and body. Cantor said it in his theorem: there is an infinity within a set of limits. Know yourself, know your boundaries, and anything and everything is possible. It's so incredibly difficult to see the potential from within though. We envision our desired results, the breakthroughs, and the personal bests, and we sometimes think that to achieve it all will require some Herculean effort, something that might very well break us. We set our goals and we sometimes plan the most rigid, most intense path possible. It's valiant and it's inspiring, but it's irresponsible ambitious. Maybe instead of trying to break our bodies down in training, to hit the mileage goals that wear us out, to run our repeats too fast, we can work within the our own bodies and abilities.

It's more difficult than it seems to keep yourself in check though. Many of us bring an unrivaled intensity to our running, for we always hope for faster, stronger, farther. It's difficult to stay within your limits, to train not just intensely but also intelligently. Especially within the past month, I've dealing with respecting my own limits lately. Missing a slew of days with strep throat and dealing with some foot troubles have driven my nearly crazy. The mileage and workout goals I had established had to be adjusted and readjusted, but the goal itself hasn't changed. Instead of more weeks at peak mileage, I'm spending more time building up and getting in quality workouts. I'm learning to take easy days truly easily, listening to my body when it needs rest. I'm trying make smarter decisions, like running inside instead of risking life and limb outside during snowstorms. Learning what the body can and cannot handle has been essential to my marathon training. Running logs and workout plans and lap splits, for as useful as they are, can so often lead us to overtrain and overstep those boundaries. Just because I realize and respect my limits doesn't mean I'm limiting my goals. Within this body and this mindset I'm working to grow. Within these limits there's infinite potential, and if I run smart enough and hard enough, any goal is possible.