Читать книгу Racing Toward Recovery. The Extraordinary Story of Alaska Musher Mike Williams Sr. онлайн

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But really, nothing big happened like that while I was there. I was able to move around Korea quite easily. Actually, my appearance as an Alaska Native man was similar to the Koreans’ so they would talk to me. I looked like them and I blended in very well with the Korean population. The language was different, of course, and their ways were a little different. But I took up tae kwon do, the martial arts discipline. Six days a week I trained at night after a day of work, practicing my karate-like skills. Two hours at a time six days a week. That’s what I did with my evenings.

Taking up Asian martial arts was good for my body and my mind. It is not only a physical discipline. There is a mental toughness necessary. It did actually help me on the Iditarod Trail sometimes in terms of being able to withstand adversity. Sometimes during the Iditarod when things aren’t going well and you are very tired and extremely cold and the dogs are having problems and not eating and you get dehydrated and sleep-deprived you go, What the heck am I doing here? You start to wonder if you should quit the race and go home. But that martial arts training, training consistently and training hard, made me a stronger person. I was able to defend myself—not to have a skill to beat up others—and had discipline. So I didn’t quit.