|
Running for 90 years |
 |
|
|
|
||
|
b This page was last edited on Tuesday, 10 November 2009
This website is hosted by Wellington Community Network, connecting people, community and ideas. WCN is supported by Wellington City Council. |
Motivation Marathons Cross Country Miscellaneous Me thinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow - Henry David ThoreauThe highest reward for a person's toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it - John Ruskin Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently - Henry Ford
“The
best thing for being sad,” replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow,
“is to learn something. That’s the only thing that never fails. You
may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night
listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you
may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your
honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for
it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is
the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be
tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting.
Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to
learn.” On winning and losing - "It makes you start wondering when it was that we lost sight of that most fundamental principle of sport: that for every winner there must be a loser, that whatever the competition there are no guarantees. As Rudyard Kipling once advised, if we - whether participants, supporters or administrators - could only see a way towards treating victory and defeat as equal imposters, we'd also be taking a big step towards appreciating what the whole shooting match was about." - Richard Boock, Sunday Star Times columnist A victory without danger is a triumph without glory. - Pierre Corneille It's choice–not chance–that determines your destiny. - Jean Nidetch I see running as a tool, I see it as more than just a sport. I see it as a way of treating my life. Everything in life is hard and you have to work hard for it. - Terefe Ejigu, Scottish athlete, winner of the senior men's Dorne Cup race, quoted in The Wellingtonian The spectator gets to see the last three or four minutes of the past 10 years of an athlete's life. They don't see all the other stuff that goes in . . . like this morning, it was pissing down with rain and it was freezing cold out on the lake and the man was chomping out the session and not once did he complain because he knows he has to do it to maximise his chances of success. - Mark Sutherland, coach of Ben Fouhy I want to be alone now. - Some honest feedback from a runner reacting to some attempted encouragement by one of his van mates who made the mistake of running alongside and offering too much positive support during the Jasper to Banff Relay. (Runner's Tip: While perhaps not as polite, a simple hand gesture is not only more direct in terms of honest feedback, it is also more aerobically efficient). It was undoubtedly the most beautifully executed race of my career. A true climax to 8 years' steady work, an artistic creation. - Jack Lovelock, on his 1500 race for gold at the 1936 Olympics Physical endurance is not enough. I believe athletics is 85% to 90% mental. You can take an athlete with as much talent as me but I'm tougher mentally, I'm going to come out on top. You have to be mentally strong enough to go through pressure. It must be practised as much as running or jumping. You have to concentrate on positiveness, feed yourself positive energy. If you tell yourself you can't do something, nine times out of ten, you won't be able to do it - Jackie Joyner-Kersee, US heptathlete and twice Olympic champion Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly - Robert F. Kennedy Running isn’t a sport for pretty boys with visions of grandeur. It’s about the sweat in your hair and the blisters on your feet. It’s about the frozen spit on your chin and the nausea in your gut. It’s about throbbing calves and cramps at midnight that are strong enough to wake the dead. It’s about getting out the door and running when the rest of the world is dreaming about having the passion that you need to live each and every day with. It’s about being on a lonely road and running like a champion even when there’s not a single soul in sight to cheer you on. . . . Running is all about having the desire to train and persevere until every individual fiber in your legs, heart, and mind is turned to steel. And when you’re finally forged hard enough you will have become the best runner you can be. And that’s all that you can ask for. - Paul Maurer, "The Gift, A Runner's Story"
Plaque on a sculpture in Melbourne: Sportsmanship This sculpture immortalises an act of sportsmanship that took place at Olympic Park, Melbourne, during the Australian mile champion- ship in 1956, in which John Landy stopped to help a fallen Ron Clarke. Landy's feat in going on to win the race has been over- shadowed by the unselfish gesture that is part of Australian sporting lore. The following was published as an open letter by sports journalist Harry Gordon in The Sun News-Pictorial on March 12, 1956. Dear
John, Up in the Press seats they don't usually clap. They are busy and they are used to big sport. Mostly they've mastered the art of observing without becoming excited. On Saturday, at 4:35, the sports writers forgot the rules. They had a hero ... every one of them. And you were it. Among the 22,000 who crammed into Olympic Park, there was not a soul who was not thrilled and inspired by your effort. None of them will forget it. Yours was the classic sporting gesture. It was a senseless piece of chivalry - but it will be remembered as one of the finest actions in the history of sport. In a nutshell, you sacrificed the chance of a world record to go to the aid of a fallen rival. And in pulling up, trotting back to Ron Clarke, muttering "Sorry" and deciding to chase the field, you achieved much more than any world record. You action cost you six or seven seconds. And you sprinted round that last lap like a 220 runner and you overhauled the field to win in 4 minutes 4.2 seconds. You ... the fellow who used to be called a mechanical runner without a finish! A lot of people are wondering why you pulled up. The truth is, of course, that you didn't think about it. It was the instinctive action of a man whose mate is in trouble. In the record books it will look like a very ordinary run for these days. But, for my money, the fantastic gesture and the valiant recovery make it overshadow your magnificient miles in Turku and Vancouver. It was your greatest triumph. And it is fitting that it took place in your home town. * * * * * * I am positive of only a few things in life, but one is that if you want to have a decent middle and old age, you have to get exercise almost every day. - Anne Lamott She went on to say that the older people she knows who are thriving have stayed physically active. Exercise can spell the difference between a decent ageing and a descent into ageing. Let me win. But if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt. - Special Olympics Athlete Oath Pain is temporary; quitting is forever. - Lance Armstrong The secret of cross country is to do everything we on the track and take it into the bush. - Mike Koskei, former national coach of Kenya E kore e mau i a koe he wae kai pakiaka - Proverb - a foot accustomed to run over roots shall not be caught by you - (a person who runs on bush trails can't be caught) - Motto of the Te Houtaewa 90-mile Beach Ultramarathon. The finish is not the end; it is just the beginning of the addiction. After you'd spoken to Arthur, you could run through brick walls. - Former Olympic medal-winning athlete Dick Quax on the inspirational coach Arthur Lydiard Impossible is just a big word thrown around
by small men who find it easier to live in the world they've been given
than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a
fact. It's an opinion. Impossble is not a declaration. It's a dare.
Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing. Quotes from Emil
Zatopek
To boast of a
performance which I cannot beat is merely stupid vanity. And if I can
beat it, that means there is nothing special about it. What has passed
is already finished with. What I find more interesting is what is still
to come. We forget our bodies to
the benefit of mechanical leisure. We act continuously with our brain,
but we no longer use our bodies, our limbs. It is the Africans who
possess this vitality, this muscular youth, this thirst for physical
action, which we are lacking. We have a magnificent motor at our
disposal, but we no longer know how to use it. There is a great
advantage in training under unfavorable conditions. It is better to
train under bad conditions, for the difference is then a tremendous
relief in a race. What has passed is
already finished with. What I find more interesting is what is still to
come. A runner must run with
dreams in his heart, not money in his pocket. You can't climb up to
the second floor without a ladder....When you set your aim too high and
don't fulfill it, then your enthusiasm turns to bitterness. Try for a
goal that's reasonable, and then gradually raise it. It's at the borders of
pain and suffering that the men are separated from the boys. After all those dark
days of the war, the bombing, the killing, the starvation, the revival
of the Olympics was as if the sun had come out....I went into the
Olympic Village and suddenly there were no more frontiers, no more
barriers. Just the people meeting together. It was wonderfully warm. Men
and women who had just lost five years of life were back again. (about
the 1948 London Olympics) If you come to think of
it, you never see deer, dogs and rabbits worrying about their menus and
yet they run much faster than humans. Runner's World Daily: How
do you compare the modern runner with yourself? It
is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong
man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The
credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is
marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs
and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the
great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best,
knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if
he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall
never be with those timid souls who know neither victory nor
defeat." For
the serious athlete there is no wall, but there is a twilight zone of
the marathon that begins about 23 miles and lasts through to the finish.
Everybody who can run in the top half of the pack is hurting at this
point, from the winner on down. This is when the mind takes over from
the body. The will power that motivated your hard, often inconvenient
training for the past number of weeks or months will pull you through. Run with your brain for the first two thirds of
the race and with your heart for the last third. Sport offers a shot at glory beyond your
dreams: but it never offers a job for life. In sport you are finished at
an age when most of us are just beginning to find our stride. The
strife, the glory, the love, the purpose: all gone. You are left with
press cuttings written by people you despised. Nothing besides remains. People
have told me you need to be strong, so I've got to get into the gym and
do the work. If I didn't, I'd have probably broken a few bones by now the
way I play. It's always good to beat the forwards in the weight room.
They don't like it. It's
not going to happen unless you commit yourself. You have to prove it to
yourself. You're the only one who can make it happen. I've
learned that the most effective way to forge a winning team is to call
on the players' need to connect with something larger than themselves.
Even for those who don't consider themselves spiritual in a conventional
sense, creating a successful team -- whether it's an NBA champion or a
record-setting sales force -- is essentually a spiritual act. It
requires the individuals involved to surrender their self-interest for
the greater good so that the whole adds up to more than the sum of the
parts. Setting
goals for your game is an art. The trick is setting them at the right
level -- neither too low or too high. A good goal should be lofty
enough to inspire hard work, yet realistic enough to provide solid hope
of attainment. I
seldom get nervous, but in the days leading up to a major event I do
think about it, mainly when I go to bed. I think about my opponents,
their strengths and weaknesses, how they are likely to run the race and
all that stuff. Then I think about myself, what I can do and what I
can't. Then I try to picture the race and run it through my mind. When
players practice what is known as mindfulness -- simply paying attention
to what's actually happening -- not only do they play better and win
more, they also become more attuned with each other. And the joy they
experience working in harmony is a powerful motivating force that comes
from deep within, not from some frenzied coach pacing along the
sidelines, shouting obscenities into the air. I
think sport psychology is crucial. If I look back at why we lost the
World Cup [1999 World Champs], it was't because we didn't have the
skill, fitness, talent or training. It was because mentally we let it
slip. Sport psychology is preparing your brain and your mental aspect
and I think that's what let us down. Quotes from "sports thoughts," a collection by sports psychologist Ken Hodge It's not just training..... It's an attitude - if you want to run well everything has to focus on running. The first thing you should think about in the morning is running. - Michael Aish We know nothing about motivation. All we can do
is write books about it. Nothing in the world can take the place of
persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with
talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will
not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone
are omnipotent. The slogan, "Press on," has solved and always will solve the
problems of the human race Kites rise highest against the wind - not with
it. Example is not the main thing in influencing
others, it is the only thing. I never criticize a player until they are first
convinced of my unconditional confidence in their abilities. You are what you think. You are what you go for.
You are what you do! Don't measure yourself by what you have
accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability. Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is
what keeps you going. Motivation is like food for the brain. You cannot
get enough in one sitting. It needs continual and regular top ups. This time like all times is a very good one, if we
but know what to do with it Everyone is trying to accomplish something big,
not realizing that life is made up of little things. Even though you may want to move forward in your
life, you may have one foot on the brakes. In order to be free, we must learn
how to let go. Release the hurt. Release the fear. Refuse to entertain your old
pain. The energy it takes to hang onto the past is holding you back from a new
life. What is it you would let go of today? Watch your thoughts; they become words. The most important thing about motivation is goal
setting. You should always have a goal. I still feel like I gotta prove something. There
are a lot of people hoping I fail. But I like that. I need to be hated. Quotes from Arthur Lydiard A couple of years ago, Ian Kemp of Cool Running attended a seminar addressed by Arthur Lydiard and jotted down some Lydiardisms. On overtraining If you are not enjoying training, stop all anaerobic training. Go out for a long jog, so slow that the old ladies with shopping baskets go past you. Do that until you start to enjoy it! Finding a coach Just have a look at the athletes he's trained. If they're no-hopers, that's how you'll end up! On coaching Athletes need to enjoy their training. They don't enjoy going down to the track with a coach making them do repetitions until they're exhausted. From enjoyment comes the will to win. On goal-setting The
greater the endurance component of the event the longer your goals have to be.
For 10k or the marathon, you have to have five-year goals. For middle distance
runners, it can be shorter, say two to three years. Life is
not a spectator sport. . . . If you're going to spend your whole life in the
grandstand just watching what goes on, in my opinion, you're wasting your life. We would love Kate to re-invent herself as a
sprinter. If she got out there and did some speed work, she could go anywhere. Mark Taylor on sport and life: Competition is part of life, and it's about losing too. I am trying to teach my six-year-old this. He loves winning, but the bottom line is that there are always times when you'll have a bad run and you'll need to call on your inner strength and become a better person. That's what I like so much about team sport. In England last year and before that I hadn't played any worse throughout my career, and yet I was still a winner. I was a loser personally, but the team was winning. What better lesson can you get for living than that? That although you're not doing well yourself, if you can just hang in and play your part, you can still be a winner. You won't lag behind, because you'll have the
speed. . . . there is potential everywhere, though this
is not about potential only. It's about personal sacrifices, and the kids making
choices about whether they want to become a gold medalist or not. Sometimes they
make the choice and say, "I want to become a champion," but they are
not willing to walk the path. They want to win, but they don't want to go
through the process. They have to develop a passion - you need to want to
run fast. I tell these kids nowadays if you train slowly, you're going to run
slowly. You need to raise expectations and try to go faster every time. Determination -- The race is not always to the
swift but to those who keep on running. To
work - to work! It is such infinite delight to know that we still have the best
things to do. I didn't fully recover from the Matterhorn race, and then still having to train at altitude after that was too much for my body. I've got quite a sensitive system and the altitude just doesn't suit me. (She says she'll learn from her nightmarish race and become a better athlete for it.) I have to take a few positives out of it. Although there aren't many. - Melissa Moon after a disappointing 22nd in the World Mountain Running Race Aspiring experts in athletics focus on physical development; aspiring masters place equal emphasis on developing body, mind and emotions in order to achieve balance. You may or may not seek competitive glory, but the qualities you develop in your chosen form of training can, if approached correctly, breed success in every facet of daily life. . . . Training is a mirror of your life that reflects both your weakensses and strengths as you hike up the path to your potential. At the highest level, as you enter the zone - the moment of truth - training has the power to lift your spirits tp a higher plateau so that you experience life in a new way. - Dan Millman, Body Mind Mastery. Remember: you are not only running for yourself; you are also running for all of your clubmates in Scottish's 85-year history. - Sports psychologist at a coaching session in 2000. What Makes A Man Run? People can't understand why a man runs. They don't see any sport in it. Argue it lacks the sight and thrill of body contact. Yet, the conflict is there, more raw and challenging than any man versus man competition. For 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. - Glenn Cunningham Why Do Runners Run? I had learned what it means to ride the Tour de France. It's not about the bike. It's a metaphor for life, not only the longest race in the world but also the most exalting and heartbreaking and potentially tragic. It poses every conceivable element to the rider, and more: cold, heat, mountains, plains, ruts, flat tires, high winds, unspeakably bad luck, unthinkable beauty, yawning senselessness, and above all, a great, deep self-questioning. During our lives we're faced with so many different elements as well, we experience so many setbacks, and fight such a hand-to-hand battle with failure, head down into the rain, just trying to stay upright and to have a little hope. The Tour is not just a bike race, not at all. It is a test. It tests you physically, it tests you mentally, and it even tests you morally. - Lance Armstrong The more I talk to athletes, the more convinced I become that the method of training is relatively unimportant. There are many ways to the top, and the training method you choose is just the one that suits you best. No, the important thing is the attitude of the athlete, the desire to get to the top. - Herb Elliot Champions do not become champions when they win the event, but in the hours, weeks, months and years that they spend preparing for it. The victorious performance is merely the demonstration of their championship character. - T. Alan Armstrong The long run is what puts the tiger in the cat. -
Bill Squires. You don't have to have the lead if you have the courage to come from behind. - Anon Runners must practice their running. If they don't do it and don't enjoy it, they're never going to reach the top. Of course, they may not reach the top anyway. But, if they enjoy the running, they are getting one of its biggest prizes. - Anon If only all women could know the joy and the strength and the self-confidence that happens when you have the courage to try. If only they could all know what it feels like to be happy in their skin. - Lindsay Weight, who has won the Comrades Marathon twice You don’t run against a bloody stop watch, do you hear? A runner runs against himself, against the best that’s in him. Not against a dead thing of wheels and pulleys. That’s the way to be great, running against yourself. Against all the rotten mess in the world. Against God, if you’re good enough. - Bill Persons Running is a big question mark that’s there each and every day. It asks you, "Are you going to be a wimp or are you going to be strong today." - Peter Maher 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. - Ken Doherty You must realize one thing. In every little village in the world there are great potential champions who only need motivation, development and good exercise evaluation. - Arthur Lydiard A certain amount of opposition can be of great help to a man. Kites rise against, not with the wind. - John Neal Physiology defines a good athlete, but psychology defines a great one. - Jon Ackland Running has given me a glimpse of the greatest freedom that a man can ever know, because it results in the simultaneous liberation of both body and mind. - Roger Bannister Running for money doesn't make you run fast. It makes you run first. - Ben Kipcho Obstacles are those frightening things that become visible when we take our eyes off our goals. - Henry Ford Live clean and train hard. - Joe Dom We can blaze! Become legends in our own time, strike fear in the heart of mediocre talent everywhere! We can scald dogs, put records out of reach! Make the stands gasp as we blow into an unearthly kick from three hundred yards out! We can become God's own messengers delivering the dreaded scrolls! We can race dark Satan himself till he wheezes fiery cinders down the back straightaway! They'll speak our names in hushed tones, "Those guys are animals," they'll say! We can lay it on the line, bust a gut, show them a clean pair of heels. We can sprint the turn on a spring breeze and feel the winter leave our feet! - Anonymous Running - or any other effortful gross-motor activity - is a powerful tool for keeping ourselves in the present tense, and the present tense is always a vacation. Vacations are restorative - unless, perhaps, we go at them competitively. . . Even purely recreational runners can . . . come to know what racers know: that the most enjoyable times in running come when you are teetering on the edge of fatigue but hang on a moment longer, and a moment longer, and at some point discover not only that you can bear it but that you can even pick it up a bit. from "the elements of effort" by John Jerome Running is for now, training is for later. Training is about increase, improvement; it is future-oriented, aimed at pushing back the edge of the envelope. Running is for the run itself. It's only when you run for the running that you can hope to flow. It's worth a try now and then. You can't train all the time, you know. - John Jerome Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall. - Confucius The only easy day was yesterday - USN SEAL HQ motto Significant problems you face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them. - Albert Einstein Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence. - Vince Lombardi We will go to the moon. We will go to the moon and do other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard. - John F. Kennedy, Jr. Those who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those doing it. - Michael Johnson's coach Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself. - William Faulkner Ability is what you are capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it. - Lou Holtz Some individuals dream of great accomplishments, while others stay awake and do them. - Beth Lukens The harder you work, the luckier you get. - Gary Player I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have. - Thomas Jefferson Why dost thou run so many miles about? - Shakespeare, Richard III If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that - Lewis Carroll These high wild hills and rough uneven ways draw out our miles and make them wearisome - Shakespeare, Richard II Somewhere in the world someone is training when you are not. When you race him, he will win. - Tom Fleming Every morning in Africa a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must move faster than the lion or it will not survive. Every morning a lion wakes up and it knows it must move faster than the slowest gazelle or it will starve. It doesn't matter if you are the lion or the gazelle, when the sun comes up, you better be moving. - Maurice Greene (also attributed to Roger Bannister shortly after running the first sub-4 mile) Cheruiyot said he felt that the "real marathon" began with three miles left as he and fellow Kenyans jostled for the lead. "When a lion is chasing an antelope, he doesn't look back. He needs to eat," said Cheruiyot. "When I am in front, I don't spare my time." - Robert Cheruiyot, repeat winner of the Boston Marathon Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of the hard work you've already done. - Newt Gingrich Motivation is like an umbrella on a rainy day. You can go out
without it - by applying your will - but it makes for a more enjoyable
journey. - 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. - George Sheehan If one can stick to the training throughout the many long years, then will power is no longer a problem. It's raining? That doesn't matter. I am tired? That's besides the point. It's simply that I just have to. - Emil Zatopek You get to the point in a race where you can make a split decision whether to give up or push through that pain barrier and keep going. It's just being able to dig deep and suffer a little bit, but to know there is an end to that suffering. - Melissa Moon The difference between a jogger and a runner is an entry [form]. - George Sheehan Mental will is a muscle that needs exercise, just like muscles of the body. - Lynn Jennings You miss 100% of the shots you never take. - Wayne Gretzky Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence. - Vince Lombardi Thoughts from the great running philosopher, Anonymous:
What
I have learned from marathon running is perseverence. Never give up - it
is just another obstacle and you can get around it. If you stand at the
start line and think you have to run 42k, it is daunting. It is
the same in business - if you look at everything that is ahead of
you. But if you think, "I just need to get to the first drink
stop," if you break it down, you know you can do it.
If
God invented marathons to keep people from doing anything more stupid, the triathlon must have taken him completely by surprise. I have just read your quote about "a marathon just being 105 laps of the track!" I wonder if Matt D. told you that my club here doesn't do anything that stupid - we stop at 40k or 40,000m as they say here! I have only done the 40 once but unfortunately 30,000 is pretty much a staple over here for many. Another example of the "track mentality" here was when I was watching Jono in the Beppu marathon. I was with a Japanese mate at the 34k mark. As the runners went by, he encouraged them all with a friendly "Keep going - only 20 laps to go!" Guess he'd forgotten about the 195m at the end. - Mark te Punga in Japan Why couldn't Pheidippides have died here? - Frank Shorter, at the 25k-mark in a marathon I'm not going to run this again - Grete Waitz, after winning her first of eight New York City Marathons Marathoning
is like cutting yourself unexpectedly. You dip into the pain so gradually that
the damage is done before you are aware of it. Unfortunately, when awareness
comes, it is excruciating. - If you want to run, then run a mile. If you want to experience another life, run a marathon. - Emil Zatopek The marathon can humble you. - Bill Rodgers I just run as hard as I can for 20 miles, and then race. - Steve Jones No doubt a brain and some shoes are essential for marathon success, although if it comes down to a choice, pick the shoes. More people finish marathons with no brains than with no shoes. - Don Kardong If you start to feel good during an ultra, don't worry you will get over it. - Gene Thibeault Start slow, then taper off. - Walt Stack George Sheehan (runner, cardiologist, writer, philosopher, who died in 1993, aged 74) on the marathon (from Running & Being, 1978): James Joyce took the ten years of Homer's Odyssey and compressed them into a Dublin day. He looked into the mind and heart and body of the hero Ulysses and created Leopold Bloom, who is everyman. . . . And then he put all of it into the waking-to-sleeping day of his Irish Jew. It takes eighteen hours. The Boston Marathon does it in three. Like many sports, the marathon is a microcosm of life. The marathoner can experience the drama of everyday existence so evident to the artist and poet. . . . The journey from Hopkinton to Boston, like the journey from Troy to Ithaca, reveals what happens to a man when he faces up to himself and the world around him. And why he succeeds or fails. Ulysses succeeds not because he is a superior athlete, although he is. [He can build boats, run and throw a discus, flail, cut up and cook an ox.] All these skills do not explain his eventual success. His secret is that he endures. He takes life as it comes and says yes. This trait is so commonly displayed at Boston, it seems universal. I believe every human must have this capacity and could find it if he tried. And there is no better place to discover it than in a marathon. For the truth is that every man in a marathon is a survivor or nothing, including the winner. Winning is, in fact, unimportant. Brief is the season of man's delight, sang Pindar in his ode to an Olympic winner. And many a winner has learned the truth that his laurel is indeed, as Housman wrote, a garland briefer than a girl's. There is, then, no happy-ever-aftering for a marathoner, no matter what his age. Tomorrow is another race, another test, another challenge. And then there is another race, and another. David Blaikie, Ultramarathon Canada, 1986-87: Mind over marathon: An ultramarathon, by design, is a showdown between mind and body. But pain is not the goal, any more than danger and disease were what Columbus had in mind when he pointed his small ships west. It is at most the price of exploring personal limits and pushing them back. Perhaps the genius of ultrarunning is its supreme lack of utility. It makes no sense in a world of space ships and supercomputers to run vast distances on foot. There is no money in it and no fame, frequently not even the approval of peers. But as poets, apostles and philosophers have insisted from the dawn of time, there is more to life than logic and common sense. The ultrarunners know this instinctively. And they know something else that is lost on the sedentary. They understand, perhaps better than anyone, that the doors to the spirit will swing open with physical effort. In running such long and taxing distances, they answer a call from the deepest realms of their being - a call that asks who they are. Just remember, the marathon is the same as running 105 times around the track - Paul Rodway, after a speed session at Newtown Park Get out well, but not too quickly, move through the field, be comfortable. Strategy-wise, go with your strengths. If you don't have a great finish, you must get away to win. I've always found it effective to make a move just before the crest of a hill. You get away just a little and you're gone before your opponent gets over the top. Also, around a tight bend, take off like holy hell. I've done that a number of times. You should not be flying down the home straight. Most of your efforts should have been put forth earlier. - John Treacy, Ireland's two-time world cross country champion (1978, 1979) The secret of cross country is to do everything we on the track and take it into the bush. - Mike Koskei, former national coach of Kenya The start of a world cross-country event is like riding a horse in the middle of a buffalo stampede. It's a thrill if you keep up, but one slip and you're nothing but hoof prints. - Ed Eyestone No other type of running offers such a variety of terrain, scenery and emotional experience as cross country. As every experienced harrier knows, cross-country racing is a love-hate relationship. It is a scenic, serene, and rewarding experience only after the race is over. The race itself is a gut-wrenching ordeal that demands careful preparation and promises no "runner's high." - Bob Glover Jogging through the forest is pleasant, as is relaxing by the fire with a glass of gentle Bordeaux and discussing one's travels. Racing is another matter. The frontrunner's mind is filled with an anguished fearfulness, a panic, which drives into pain. - Kenny Moore Running taught me valuable lessons. In cross-country competition, training counted more than intrinsic ability, and I could compensate for a lack of natural aptitude with diligence and discipline. I applied this in everything I did. - Nelson Mandela. Stadiums are for spectators. We runners have nature and that is much better. - Juha Väätäinen, Finland The freedom of cross country is so primitive. It's woman vs. Nature. - Lynn Jennings The footing was really atrocious. I loved it. I really like cross country; you're one with the mud. - Lynn Jennings School cross country runs started because the rugby pitches were flooded. There was an alternative: extra studying. This meant there were plenty of runners on sports afternoons. - Gordon Pirie E kore e mau i a koe he wae kai pakiaka - a foot accustomed to run over roots shall not be caught by you - Proverb (a person who runs on bush trails is a faster runner than others or make sure your training is specific to your target event) - Motto of the Te Houtaewa 90-mile Beach Ultramarathon. When I was about 14 or 15, and running in a pretty muddy cross country race, one of my shoes stuck in the mud and came off. Boy, was I wild. To think that I had trained hard for this race and didn't do up my shoelace tightly enough! I really got aggressive with myself, and I found myself starting to pass a lot of runners. As it turned out, I improved something like twenty places in that one race. But I never did get my shoe back. - Rob de Castella ... and plunged into woodland, into the deepest places. ... he was like a different person ... hearing the greensong of the living woodland, moving in perfect harmony to that sweet silent music. When he ran that way, not thinking about where to step, the ground became soft under his feet, and he was guided along, ...Soon he was caught up in the rhythm of his own running, forgetting anything about his own body, just part of the living forest ... - Orson Scott Card From the handicapper and the 2008 handicapping approach (Bob Stephens): "In philosophy the winner of the race is the one who can run most slowly. Or the one who gets there last." Wittgenstein, 1889-1951, Miscellaneous Remarks on Culture and Values, p. 34. The price of anything is the amount of life
you exchange for it. - "Way to go!" - A late 1990s encouragement from the sideline, meaning "You're looking good! Keep it up!"; inevitably used by someone watching a marathon at around the 21k mark, when it takes on a certain bruising truth. "Well, at least it's time on your feet." - A phrase used by runners over 50 as consolation for walking up yet another hill on a training run. I have put myself on the superannuated list too soon, and absurdly sought for health in the retreats of laziness . . . We should sometimes increase the motion of the machine, to unclog the wheels of life. - Tobias Smollett In my case, for one year of success, there have been 12 years of failures. - Ben Fouhy, kayaker, and winner of the Halberg sportsman of the year Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words, it is war minus the shooting. - George Orwell If you are considering becoming a runner, think about this. Runners combine passionate commitment with intense discipline, individual vitality with team or group loyalty, expert knowledge of their sport with experiment and risk. Those are potent combinations of qualities. The company of such people continues to be rewarding long after their legs slow down. Though you never think about it as a young competitor, one of the bonuses of our activity is that good runners are likely to remain substantial, interesting and generous people. Roger Robinson Running is the greatest metaphor for life, because you get out of it what you put into it. - Oprah Winfrey It's like people always
say, "Well, does sport teach you anything in life?" It teaches you certain
things, but it doesn't teach you other things. It doesn't teach, as I say, very
much about marriage, very much about how to make a living, any of those
things. Jogging is very beneficial. It's good for your legs and your feet. It's also very good for the ground. It makes it feel needed. - Charles Schultz My doctor recently told me that jogging could add years to my life. I think he was right. I feel ten years older already. - Milton Berle Two weeks is about the ideal length of time to retire. - Alex Comfort To exercise is human; not to, is divine. - Robert Orben Life is motion. - Aristotle Experience enables you to recognise a mistake when you make it. - Bob Phillips To have great adventures and survive require good judgment, good judgment comes from experience and experience comes from poor judgment. - Finisher in the Southern Traverse Lore of the Jingle: Running products and advertising slogans You only get out what you put in. Have you done enough? - 2003 There is no finish line -1993 You don't want to tell your grandchildren you almost made it. Where your world becomes the next two strides - 1995 There are two types of people:Those who run and those who should - 1995 SWOOSH: The sound made when you blow by somebody - shirt slogan 1995 Machine Wash Cold Water Do Not Bleach Tumble Dry Endure - September 1992 Machine Wash Cold Water Do Not Bleach Tumble Dry Have Heroes-1992 Machine Wash Cold Water Do Not Bleach Tumble Dry Push Yourself-1992 Runs end. Running doesn't - September 1995 Test your faith daily - February 1995 Mothers, there's a mad man running in the streets, And he's humming a tune, And he's snarling at dogs, And he still has four more miles to go - May 1990 There are clubs you can't belong to, neighborhoods you can't live in, schools you can't get into, but the roads are always open. Runners just do it - they run for the finish line even if someone else had reached it first. Life is about feeling someone pushing from behind and realizing that it's you. The mastery of the true self, and the refusal to permit others to dominate us is the ultimate in living, and self-expression in athletics. - Percy Cerutty I have offended God and mankind because my work did not reach the quality it should have. - Leonardo da Vinci, dying words, 1519 What price do we pay when we risk-manage our lives into something safe, flat, and empty? - Lynnell Mickelsen, Southwest Journal, reporting on the trend to structured, formalized, pay to play activities for children and public paranoia about child safety that limits what kids do with what's left of their free time (as reported in Utne Reader). However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results. - Winston Churchill When you stand on the
victory stand, you must be able to ask yourself: 'Did I win this medal?' Mental will is a muscle that needs exercise, just like muscles of the body. - Lynn Jennings When I did this three years ago, it was like death. When I did it last year, it was like near death. This year, it was just really hard. - John Howie, wheelchair athlete, describing his Charlotte Observer 10k races from 1990 - 1993. I still bother with runners I call hamburgers. They're never going to run any record times. But they can fulfill their own potential. - Bill Bowerman If you make one mistake, it can result in vasectomy. - John Rowland, Olympian, speaking about the steeplechase I skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it has been. - Wayne Gretzky You miss 100% of the shots you never take. - Wayne Gretzky Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom. - General George Patton If a man does his best, what else is there? - General George Patton It only hurt once, from beginning to end. - James Counsilman, College Swimming Coach (after swimming the English Channel at the age of 58). Counsilman got his start as a swimmer at the East St. Louis YMCA. He was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame as an Honor Coach in 1976. Work is something a body is obliged to do. Play is something a body is not obliged to do. - Mark Twain The older I get, the faster I was. - Anonymous veteran runner Your toughness is made up of equal parts persistence and experience. You don't so much outrun your opponents as outlast and outsmart them, and the toughest opponent of all is the one inside your head. - Joe Henderson Racing taught me to figure out how to win, but also how to lose in such a way that I was still a winner. Every run has been a gift. I continually give thanks for both the humbling and the triumphant moments, for they have all, in their way, uplifted my spirit. - Lorraine Moller There are those that look at things the way they
are, and ask, "why?" I dream of things that never were, and ask, "why
not?" - Robert Kennedy You cannot propel yourself forward by patting yourself on the back. - Anonymous If you run 100 miles a week, you can eat anything you want. Why? Because: (a) You'll burn all the calories you consume, (b) you deserve it, and (c) you'll be injured soon and back on a restricted diet anyway. - Don Kardong To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift. - Steve Prefontaine A lot of people run a race to see who is fastest. I run to see who has the most guts, who can punish himself into exhausting pace, and then at the end, punish himself even more. Nobody is going to win a 5000m race after running an easy two miles. Not with me. If I lose forcing the pace all the way, well, at least I can live with myself. - Steve Prefontaine The price of excellence is discipline. The cost of mediocrity is disappointment. - William W. Ward More sweat in training, less blood in battle - sign over a PT field at Ft. Benning, GA If you race merely for the tributes from others, you will be at the mercy of their expectations. - Scott Tinley It hurts up to a point and then it doesn't get any worse. - Ann Trason DO or DO NOT. There is no TRY - Jedi Master Yoda (Star Wars) One cannot consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar. - Helen Keller Hard training, easy combat; easy training, hard combat. - Russian General Marshal Suvorov Having trouble improving your half marathon times? Get your time down to under 22 minutes! A team of Russian engineers has developed Quickwalker boots, which allow you to leap over obstacles 2m high, take 4m strides and reach speeds of up to 60kph. Speed is not the ultimate goal. Their main function is to reduce the muscular exertion required to run, says their inventor, Viktor Gordeyev, from the State Aviation Technical University at Ufa in the Southern Urals. Each time the wearer takes a step and puts his weight on one foot, an engine mounted in the heel of the titanium and aluminium frame on that boot cuts in. This drives a hydraulic piston that propels the wearer forward. It's a great feeling, says Gordeyev. You get the sensation of flight. Small tanks on the side of the boots hold 40g of fuel, enough for a journey of 20k. While the team made the prototypes in 1972, the Soviet military classified the design as secret in 1985 and ordered 100 pairs for Red Army infantrymen to wear as they supported fast-moving tank units. Army generals later rejected the design and the boots were declassified in 1990. -- New Scientist, 15 July 2000. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that. - Lewis Carroll True sport is always a duel: a duel with nature, with one's own fear, with one's own fatigue, a duel in which body and mind are strengthened. - Yevgeny Yevtushenko Racing taught me to figure out how to win, but also how to lose in such a way that I was still a winner. Every run has been a gift. I continually give thanks for both the humbling and the triumphant moments, for they have all, in their way, uplifted my spirit. - Lorraine Moller Arthur Lydiard on the difference between accountants and economists: Before the 1974 Commonweath Games, Lydiard was shaping up Dick Tayler for the tough competition in the upcoming 10,000m, by giving him a heavy loading of anaerobic training on a college ground in Te Awamutu. A group of pupils stopped by to watch. "What's he doing?" one asked. "Repetitions," I explained. They knew all about those. "How many is he going to do?" "I don't know." "What times is he running?" I'm not timing him." They exchanged looks of disbelief. Was I supposed to be coaching one of New Zealand's best runners? Then I asked, "How far round is this track, anyway?" When Dick finished and joined us, they asked him, "How many did you do?" "I didn't count them," Dick said. "What times were you running?" "I didn't time them." I decided it was time to explain to these boys, before they ran off laughing, that times and numbers were unimportant. What mattered was the effect on Tayler of what he was doing; and he knew better than I did what he wanted to do and when he had had enough. - Running with Lydiard, 1983 Doses of George on running: George Sheehan, runner, cardiologist, writer, philosopher, of New Jersey, who died in 1993, aged 74: Sweat cleanses from the inside. It comes from places a shower will never reach. No matter how old I get, the race remains one of life's most rewarding experiences. My times become slower and slower, but the experience of the race is unchanged; each race a drama, each race a challenge, each race stretching me in one way or another, and each race telling me more about myself and others. Happiness is different from pleasure. Happiness has something to do with struggling and enduring and accomplishing. You must listen to your body. Run through annoyance but not through pain. Once you have decided that winning isn't everything, you become a winner. The obsession with running is really an obsession with the potential for more and more life. 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. I will not last forever. But I am damn well going to know I have been here. 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. 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. In facing life, no one knows exactly what is going to happen, what is going to be needed, where the search for the Grail will lead. The best we can do is be prepared. Running makes you an athlete in all areas -- trained in basics, ready for whatever comes, ready to live each day, fill each hour and deal with the decisive moment. Life is a positive-sum game. Everyone from the gold medallist to the last finisher can rejoice in a personal victory. Emil Zátopek (1922-2000) of Czechoslovakia can claim one of track's rarest feats - winning the 5,000m, 10,000m and marathon in a single Olympic Games, the 1952 games in Helsinki. Some Zátopek quotes. When a person trains once, nothing happens. When a person forces himself to do a thing a hundred or a thousand times, then he certainly has developed in more ways than physical. Is it raining? That doesn't matter. Am I tired? That doesn't matter, either. Then willpower will be no problem. We are different, in essence, from other men. If you want to win something, run 100 meters. If you want to experience something, run a marathon. I was unable to walk for a whole week after that, so much did the race take out of me. But it was the most pleasant exhaustion I have ever known. (after the Helsinki marathon, his first) A lot of people run a race to see who is fastest. I run to see who has the most guts, who can punish himself into exhausting pace, and then in the end, punish himself even more. If I lose, forcing the pace all the way, well, at least I can live with myself. - Steve Prefontaine Quotes from Steve Prefontaine (1951-75): 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. To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift. Somebody may beat me, but they are going to have to bleed to do it. I'm going to work so that it's a pure guts race at the end, and if it is, I am the only one who can win it. How does a kid from Coos Bay, with one leg longer than the other win races? All my life people have been telling me, You're too small, Pre, You're not fast enough, Pre, Give up your foolish dream, Steve. But they forgot something, I HAVE TO WIN. A race is a work of art that people can look at and be affected in as many ways they’re capable of understanding. 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. We can't all be heroes because someone has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by. - Will Rogers Extract from a Runner's World
interview with Peter Snell: I've always felt that long, slow distance produces long, slow runners. - Sebastian Coe
If you can force your heart and nerve and
sinew Let's face it. We runners have a few quirks. Okay, idiosyncrasies. All right, eccentricities. You want me to admit it? Fine. We can be a little bit nuts at times. Luckily my wife met me when I was already a runner, but she didn't know what type of damaged goods she was receiving. The type that has been known to run a massive number of laps inside the local mall (dodging shoppers) to get a run in on a cold winter day. The type that to get to work on time the morning after a marathon has to set the alarm an hour earlier than normal. This allows for the additional time it will take to gingerly navigate down the home stairways on overly sore quadriceps. I admit that I can remember my split time for the 11th and 12th mile of my last marathon a lot quicker than I can remember my mother's birthday. - Bob Schwartz, excerpt from "I Run Therefore I Am - NUTS!" (Human Kinetics hkp@ihug.co.nz) Moonlight is a total winner. Just like Melissa Moon, it performs amazingly under pressure! - Ian Corbett, Moonlight potato grower |
