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Message: [QUOTE="diggerfoot, post: 4521888, member: 1673"] Much of what you attribute to physical fatigue I would still call mental fatigue. While I was a decent marathoner, that was more of a past time in the off season of my main “sport,” long distance hiking. Whether hiking 40 miles a day for over a month to map the AT, over 30 miles a day for weeks with a full pack, carrying a oack over 100 pounds at elevations of 10,000 feet and elevation change in the thousands, or once setting the 24 hour record of hiking 80 miles in one day on the AT, more mental focus was required for hiking than with distance running. Blisters, tendonitis, bruises and rashes were all typical ailments that one had to mentally endure, and I maintain that the enduring of physical impacts, whether a blowdown or post player, is more mental if you are sufficiently conditioned for the sport. Beyond that, one better have the physical conditioning for the foot/eye coordination to work well on that 35th mile on a steep, downhill rocky slope that you can’t linger on in order to complete the day by dark. The consequence otherwise could be broken bones or worse. Yet having said that, my mind could still be on autopilot for much of the day, traveling over smooth, graded trails for much of that time. That makes what I did easier, mentally easier not physically, than a 40 minute basketball game at an elite level. And I would say that the reason Bueckers and others have such great eye/hand coordination at the end of games, or Jordan can score 42 points while suffering from the flu, is not because they are so much better physically conditioned specimens, but because they have a mental toughness few have. [/QUOTE]

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