Distance Runner Quotes

We are just not made up to be middle distance runners.

My guess is many top athletes, distance runners included, use performance-enhancing drugs, enough so that the problem must be tackled.

In golf, as in life, you get out of it what you put into it.

It is true that speed kills. In distance running, it kills anyone who does not have it.

Good things come slow, especially in distance running.

Stadiums are for spectators. We runners have Nature, and that is much better.

The long run is what puts the tiger in the cat.

The will to win means nothing without the will to prepare.

Go in any direction..seeking out new sights just on the strength of your feet and the courage of your lungs.

To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.

Running is the greatest metaphor for life, because you get out of it what you put into it.

A runners creed: I will win; if I cannot win, I shall be second; if I cannot be second, I shall be third; if I cannot place at all, I shall still do my best.

We run, not because we think it is doing us good, but because we enjoy it and cannot help ourselves...The more restricted our society and work become, the more necessary it will be to find some outlet for this craving for freedom. No one can say, 'You must not run faster than this, or jump higher than that.' The human spirit is indomitable.

You shall become the person you are.

The distance runner is mysteriously reconciling the separations of body and mind, of pain and pleasure, of the conscious and the unconscious. He is repairing the rent, and healing the wound in his divided self. He has found a way to make the ordinary extraordinary; the commonplace unique; the everyday eternal.

The mile has a classic symmetry....It's a play in four acts.

To be a champion long-distance runner you have to run on the edge of death.

Racing teaches us to challenge ourselves. It teaches us to push beyond where we thought we could go. It helps us to find out what we are made of. This is what we do. This is what it's all about.

Swimming is probably the ultimate of burnout sports. It's ironic because millions of people who swim as their regular exercise love the meditation aspect of it; you don't wind up with any orthopedic injuries. But when you swim at a world class level for hours and hours - the loneness of the long distance runner.

Workouts are like brushing my teeth; I don't think about them, I just do them. The decision has already been made.

Some people create with words or with music or with a brush and paints. I like to make something beautiful when I run

Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up, it knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn't matter whether you're the lion or a gazelle-when the sun comes up, you'd better be running.

A lot of people don't realize that about 98 percent of the running I put in is anything but glamorous: 2 percent joyful participation, 98 percent dedication! It's a tough formula. Getting out in the forest in the biting cold and the flattening heat, and putting in kilometer after kilometer.

Back in the 1970s, I ate a high-protein diet to get bigger and stronger. As a senior at Utah State, I weighed 218 pounds with eight percent body fat, and threw the discus over 190 feet. Then I got some advice from the people at the Olympic Training Center. I needed carbs, they advised, and lots of them. They pointed to studies done on the American distance runners. Being an idiot, I took the advice to eat like emaciated, over-trained sub-performers. It took years of high carbohydrate grazing to learn the evils of this advice.

Fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run.

Those who say that I will lose and am finished will have to run over my body to beat me.

Some people create with words or with music or with a brush and paints. I like to make something beautiful when I run. I like to make people stop and say, 'I've never seen anyone run like that before.' It's more than just a race, it's a style. It's doing something better than anyone else. It's being creative.

I haven't seen too many American distance men on the international scene willing to take risks. I saw some U.S. women in Barcelona willing to risk, more than men. The Kenyans risk. Steve Prefontaine risked. I risked - I went through the first half of the Tokyo race just a second off my best 5000 time.

Mind is everything. Muscle - pieces of rubber. All that I am, I am because of my mind.

I run to see who has the most guts.

Ask yourself: 'Can I give more?'. The answer is usually: 'Yes'.

Mental will is a muscle that needs exercise, just like the muscles of the body.

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.

Actually, ambition won't get you that far. You'll shift gears. You'll see something that's shinier. But if you believe... then you're the long-distance runner.

I do identify with Olympic athletes quite a lot because they have to push to reach a certain plateau and some of them go on and some of them give up and some art - you know, some people are very talented in art and do a few amazing things and then give it up and go on and do other things, and others are in it for the long haul, more or less long-distance runners.

Art is nothing more than the shadow of humanity.

You have to wonder at times what you're doing out there. Over the years, I've given myself a thousand reasons to keep running, but it always comes back to where it started. It comes down to self-satisfaction and a sense of achievement.

I've always felt that long, slow distance produces long, slow runners.

I always loved running... it was something you could do by yourself, and under your own power. You could go in any direction, fast or slow as you wanted, fighting the wind if you felt like it, seeking out new sights just on the strength of your feet and the courage of your lungs.

I always loved running.... It was something you could do by yourself and under your own power.

Everyone who has run knows that its most important value is in removing tension and allowing a release from whatever other cares the day may bring.

When the meal was over we all had a quiet rest in our rooms and I meditated on the race. This is the time when an athlete feels all alone in the big world. Opponents assume tremendous stature. Any runner who denies having fears, nerves or some kind of disposition is a bad athlete, or a liar.

To describe the agony of a marathon to someone who's never run it is like trying to explain color to someone who was born blind.

My whole feeling in terms of racing is that you have to be very bold. You sometimes have to be aggressive and gamble.

A race is a work of art that people can look at and be affected in as many ways they're capable of understanding.

In running it is man against himself, the cruelest of opponents. The other runners are not the real enemies. His adversary lies within him, in his ability with brain and heart to master himself and his emotions.

Running! If there's any activity happier, more exhilarating, more nourishing to the imagination, I can't think of what it might be.

I want to be a lawyer, a dancer, an actress, a mother, a wife, a childrens author, a distance runner, a poet, a pianist, a pet store owner, an astronaut, an environmental and humanitarian activist, a psychiatrist, a ballet teacher, and the first woman president.

Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.

People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.