In Others' Words

Despite an inexplicable sluggishness, I enjoyed a lovely run through seventy-degree Virginia tobacco country last evening, and was delighted to return to the Burgh to see that the sun found its way north of the Mason-Dixon as well.  While no one around here probably needs any added inspiration to run on such a fine day as today, I've been gathering various quotes about running that have struck me over the past year or so, and so, I thought I'd share.

"During 13 years of professional running, I never got it fully right. It's like golf. You'll never be perfect; you try to get a little better at every opportunity. That's the beauty of distance running, I think. It's a never-ending journey of trying to find out how good I can be, what I can improve on, even with my limitations. I'll never know the answer, but I'll keep looking for it."

- Bob Kennedy (the runner, of course)

"I sometimes think that running has given me a glimpse of the greatest freedom a man can ever know, because it results in the simultaneous liberation of both body and mind."
- Sir Roger Bannister

"Remember, the feeling you get from a good run is far better than the feeling you get from sitting around wishing you were running."
- Sarah Condor

Whether the weather be fine
or whether the weather be not,
whether the weather be cold
or whether the weather be hot,
we'll weather the weather whatever the weather,
whether we like it or not.
- Unknown

"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."
- General George S. Patton (1912 Olympian)

"It's very hard to understand in the beginning that the whole idea is not to beat the other runners. Eventually you learn that the competition is against the voice inside you that wants to quit."
- Dr. George Sheehan

“Do the work. Do the analysis. But feel your run. Feel your race. Feel the joy that is running.”
- Kara Goucher

"Running is not, as it so often seems, only about what you did in your last race or about how many miles you ran last week. It is, in a much more important way, about community, about appreciating all the miles run by other runners, too."
- Richard O'Brien

"Good things come slow--especially in distance running."
- Bill Dillinger

"Running well is a matter of having the patience to persevere when we are tired and not expecting instant results."
- Robert de Castella

"The music of a marathon is a powerful strain, one of those tunes of glory. It asks us to forsake pleasures, to discipline the body, to find courage, to renew faith and to become one's own person, utterly and completely."
- Dr. George Sheehan

"There are no standards and no possible victories except the joy you are living while dancing your run. You are not running for some future reward--the real reward is now."
- Fred Rohe, The Zen of Running

“Life is short. Running makes it seem longer.”
- Baron Hansen