It's very hard in the beginning to understand that the whole idea is not to beat the other runners. Eventually you learn that the competition is against the little voice inside you that wants you to quit.
The more I run, the more I want to run, and the more I live a life conditioned and influenced and fashioned by my running. And the more I run, the more certain I am that I am heading for my real goal: to become the person I am.
Happiness is different from pleasure. Happiness has something to do with struggling and enduring and accomplishing.
The answer to the big questions in running is the same as the answer to the big questions in life: Do the best with what you’ve got.
Listen to your body. Do not be a blind and deaf tenant.
Everyone is an athlete. The only difference is that some of us are in training, and some are not.
Sweat cleanses from the inside. It comes from places a shower will never reach.
There are as many reasons for running as there are days in the year, years in my life. But mostly I run because I am an animal and a child, an artist and a saint. So, too, are you. Find your own play, your own self-renewing compulsion, and you will become the person you are meant to be.
To know you are one with what you are doing, to know that you are a complete athlete, begins with believing you are a runner.
Success means having the courage, the determination, and the will to become the person you believe you were meant to be.
No matter how old I get, the race remains one of life’s most rewarding experiences.
And while these pounds were being shed, while the physiological miracles were occurring with the heart and muscle and metabolism, psychological marvels were taking place as well. Just so, the world over, bodies, minds, and souls are constantly being born again, during miles on the road.
Out on the roads there is fitness and self-discovery and the persons we were destined to be.