Dirty Inspirations—The Book
End of January my new book will hit the shelves and I couldn’t be more excited! The collection of 16 adventure/travel stories—each with an introspective/intellectual twist—carries the name of my blog, Dirty Inspirations: Lessons From the Trenches of Extreme Endurance Sports—and are brought to you from a lifetime of gettin’ really down and dirty. See below for holiday gift options and multiple chances to win a free book!
My toughest adventures have always left me with broad reaching questions to ponder and in my 
book we’ll travel the globe examining many of these, including the following:
Can we ‘suffer well’? Why are certain people drawn to taking risks, and how does risk-taking affect our conception of our self? Is there value in stripping down the civilized existence we work our whole lives to attain, in order to get really down and dirty? Can discomfort become comfortable? Is there a means to get in touch with who we deeply and truly are?
and,
Is it possible to train our minds to create a peak performance at will? What can we learn from fear? Is our intuition a viable tool for saving our life? Where does confidence come from? How does adventuring within a team inform one’s personal experience?
As intrigued as I have been writing it? Here is an excerpt from the Introduction:
“…Each challenge offers more glimpses of answers, hints to weave into the fabric of my overarching inquiries: Who am I as a person? Who am I as a woman? How far can I push today? The more years that passed on my journey, the more the concept of “meeting one’s potential” felt irrelevant. If potential is a place toward which we strive to arrive, then my staircase of self-exploration would eventually have ended, and even today I don’t feel that happening. Potential for athletes does involve optimal speed, endurance, and strength, and those aspects do wane markedly with age. But human potential also includes a deepening of introspection, perseverance, wisdom, and a consistent shifting of personal philosophy, all of which continue to broaden as we gain more life experience. Even though I’ve spent ample time racing toward finish lines (taking much longer to do so as I age) my mental growth in that process has never found a definitive resting place. Each new experience reminds me that it may never need to do so.
Through ultra-endurance sport, we can literally see the physical struggle and bodily damage done over time—but unless a body part blows up and shuts us down, our experiences remain an almost wholly cerebral game. As you and I journey the world of racing and adventuring together, you will, for better or worse, get an intimate peek into my brain as I move through some of the harshest environments on the planet. And within the physical stress of constant movement, pitted against extreme geography and weather, my ultimate foe or ally will continue to be my own mind.
There are many adventures that I could have included in this book. I’ve chosen a select few that not only highlight profound lessons, but also shed light on that elusive how and why. Though I raced triathlon for many years as a world-class athlete, I consider my time in the sport as a “maturing” chapter in my life as an endurance competitor. If doing a lot of IRONMAN® races pretty fast was like getting a B.S. in endurance sport, then heading into wild places while adventure racing, ultrarunning, solo-adventuring, and mountaineering would be the PhD. So: I set the stage for my inquiries during a profound triathlon season, before we head off into adventures in more remote parts of the planet. These stories are in chronological order and are interrelated as they are woven through my life, but each is designed to be read on its own.
Some of the experiences shared in this book would not make my personal list of “crowning athletic achievements,” to be found in a place of prominence on my sturdy athletic resume. In many of them, we’ll head down into some deep troughs—the most fertile places to harvest insight. What you will find in each journey are the striking gems that we all seek, and then covet, as we build our staircase of self-knowledge—warranting a place on my “most memorable” list of dirty inspirations.”
Gift Idea and New Years Inspiration!
If you pre-order this book, email terri@terrischneider.net with confirmation of your purchase and I’ll send you a hand written gift postcard you can give (until the book comes out).
Stay tuned for several upcoming book give-a-ways on Goodreads for your chance to get a free copy of Dirty Inspirations.
I couldn’t be more excited to share this with you.
Terri Schneider
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