Quotes

In the interest of full disclosure, these are quotes from an e-mail I sent out to the training class last year. But as I re-read these quoutes, I had forgotten most of them. And was all like, "Dang yall! These quotes are good!"

What I recommend is that you read through these and find one that resonates with you. Write it down and keep it in your mind. Some of these quotes are good to chew on over the next three days. Others may be a nice thing to remember somewhere on Summit Ave on Sunday morning.

You will read a lot of quotes about taking risks. I want offer my own definition of how risks relate to marathons. The risk you have taken is to sign up for and run a marathon. No other risks need to be taken. You could tell yourself at mile 10, "I feel great, the weather is awesome. I'm going to pick up the pace and see if I can catch the group ahead of me." Technically, that is a risk. But it is risk in the same way jumping out of an airplane without a parachute is a risk.

You took a risk by devoting the last fifteen weeks, months, years to a challenge with unknown results: this marathon. You took the risk to shape your life around training for one race for one fall morning, not knowing what the weather, your health, or your marathon will be like.

That is a real risk.

You guys are great. I hope you don't me to tell you that. You should already know that.

On with the quotes. Happy hunting.

QUOTES FOR THE WHOLE MARATHON EXPERIENCE
"Sport is not about being wrapped up in cotton wool. Sport as about adapting to the unexpected and being able to modify plans at the last minute. Sport, like all life, is about taking risks." - Sir Roger Bannister (first person to ever break the 4:00 mile)
*editor's note: This quote by Bannister is one of my all-time favorites.

"Good things come slow - especially in distance running."
- Bill Dellinger, Oregon coaching legend

"We are different, in essence, from other men [and women, right?]. If you want to win something, run 100 meters. If you want to experience something, run a marathon."
-Emil Zatopek Czech great who won 1952 Olympic marathon

"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 a lion or gazelle - when the sun comes up, you'd better be running."
- Anonymous

"A lot of people run a race to see who's the fastest. I run to see who has the most guts."
- Steve Prefontaine one of the greatest American runners who died
prematurely in a car accident

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

"The marathon is a charismatic event. It has everything. It has drama. It has competition. Every jogger can't dream of being an Olympic champion, but he can dream of finishing a marathon."
-Fred Lebow, founder, New York City Marathon

"In running, it doesn't matter whether you come in first, in the middle of the pack or last. You can say, 'I have finished.' There is a lot of satisfaction in that."
-Fred Lebow

"I tell our runners to divide the race into thirds. Run the first part with your head, the middle part with your personality and the last part with your heart."
-Mike Fanelli, coach of the San Francisco Impalas

"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."
- Jesse Owens

"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."
- Preseident John F. Kennedy, Jr.

"The only way to define your limits is by going beyond them."
- Anonymous

"The man [or woman] in the arena... who at best knows the triumphs of high achievement and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place will never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."
-President Teddy Roosevelt

"Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself."
- William Faulkner

"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

"Growth means change, and change involves risk, stepping from the known to the unknown."
-George Shinn

"There is more in us than we know. If we can be made to see it, perhaps for the rest of our lives, we will be unwilling to settle for less."
-Kurt Hahn

"If you want to keep your memories, you first have to live them."
-Bob Dylan

"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear."
-Mark Twain

"Anyone can run 20 miles. It's the next six that count."
-Barry Magee, marathon bronze winner in Rome, 1960

QUOTES FOR SUMMIT AVENUE
"Now if you are going to win any battle you have to do one thing. You have to make the mind run the body. Never let the body tell the mind what to do. The body will always give up. It is always tired morning, noon, and night. But the body is never tired if the mind is not tired. When you were younger the mind could make you dance all night, and the body was never tired...You've always got to make the mind take over and keep going."
- George S. Patton, U.S. Army General and 1912 Olympian

"Mind is everything: muscle - pieces of rubber. All that I am, I am because of my mind."
-Paavo Nurmi of Finland who won nine Olympic medals

"The body does not want you to do this. As you run, it tells you to stop but the mind must be strong. You always go too far for your body. You must handle the pain with strategy...It is not age; it is not diet. It is the will to succeed."
-Jacqueline Gareau, 1980 Boston Marathon champ

"Tough times don't last but tough people do." -A.C. Green

"God has given me the ability. The rest is up to me. Believe, believe, believe."
-Billy Mills, '64 Olympic 10,000-meter champion (he also ran the marathon in the '64 Olympics)

"Enjoy your pain, you've earned it."
- Anonymous

"Pain is weakness leaving the body"
-Back of a t-shirt I read

"When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on." -
President Teddy Roosevelt

"People can't understand why a man runs. They don't see any sport in it, argue that it lacks the sight-thrill of body contact, the color of rough conflict. Yet the conflict is there, more raw and challenging than any man versus man competition. In track it is man against himself, the cruelest of all opponents. The other runners are not the real enemies. His adversary lies deep within him, in his ability, with brain and heart, to control and master himself and his emotions."
- Glenn Cunningham
*editor's note: Cunningham was a premiere US middle-distance runner from the 1930s. At age eight he suffered burns so severe on his legs, doctors said he'd never walk again.

"The mind determines what's possible. The heart surpasses it."
-Pilar Coolinta

"Get going. Get up and walk if you have to, but finish the damned race."
-Ron Hill to Jerome Drayton during the 1970 Boston Marathon

"It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop."
-Confucius

"The ultimate measure of a man [or woman] is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."
-Martin Luther King, Jr.

"I am not afraid… I was born to do this."
-Joan of Arc

QUOTE ABOUT YOUR COACHES NOT RUNNING TCM (ME, DEB, AND CARLY) WHO WILL SIT ON THE CURB AND CLAP FOR ALL YOU HEROES AS YOU GO BY US
"We can't all be heroes because someone has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by."
-Will Rogers

Does anyone else have some quotes to add?