INSPIRING QUOTES
"Good things come slow - especially in distance running."
Bill Dellinger, University of Oregon coach
"The marathon is a charismatic event. It has everything. It has drama. It has competition. It has camaraderie. It has heroism. Every jogger can't dream of being an Olympic champion, but he can dream of finishing a marathon."
Fred Lebow, New York City Marathon co-founder
"If you feel bad at 10 miles, you're in trouble. If you feel bad at 20 miles, you're normal. If you don't feel bad at 26 miles, you're abnormal."
Rob de Castella, winner 1983 World Marathon Championships
"Running is the greatest metaphor for life, because you get out of it what you put into it."
- Oprah Winfrey, talk show host and marathon finisher
"You have to forget your last marathon before you try another. Your mind can't know what's coming."
- Frank Shorter, 1972 Olympic marathon gold medalist
"The marathon is a charismatic event. It has everything. It has drama. It has competition. It has camaraderie. It has heroism. Every jogger can't dream of being an Olympic champion, but he can dream of finishing a marathon."
Fred Lebow, New York City Marathon co-founder
"If you feel bad at 10 miles, you're in trouble. If you feel bad at 20 miles, you're normal. If you don't feel bad at 26 miles, you're abnormal."
Rob de Castella, winner 1983 World Marathon Championships
"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."
Emil Zatopek, Czech runner; winner of four Olympic gold medals
"The marathon can humble you."
Bill Rodgers, winner of four Boston and four NYC marathons
"The difference between the mile and the marathon is the difference between burning your fingers with a match and being slowly roasted over hot coals."
Hal Higdon, running writer and coach
"The marathon's about being in contention over the last 10K. That's when it's about what you have in your core. You have run all the strength, all the superficial fitness out of yourself, and it really comes down to what's left inside you. To be able to draw deep and pull something out of yourself is one of the most tremendous things about the marathon."
Rob de Castella
"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, running club coach
"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
"Marathoning is just another form of insanity."
John J. Kelly, winner of the 1952 Boston Marathon
"There is the truth about the marathon and very few of you have written the truth. Even if I explain to you, you'll never understand it, you're outside of it."
Douglas Wakiihuri speaking to journalists
"I definitely want to show how beautiful the marathon can be. I am the opponent of all those who find the marathon bad: the psychologists, the physiologists, the doubters. I make the marathon beatiful for myself and for others. That's why I'm here."
- Uta Pippig
“The long run is the single most important ingredient to marathon success.”
Bob Glover in The Complete Book of Running and Fitness
“Use the long run to its fullest. Ask yourself, ‘Where do I hurt after the run? What muscles are sore? Do I feel dehydrated? What about my shoes; were they laced too tight? Did I wear the right socks?’ Use it as a form of self-assessment.”
Sue Mittleman in The Essential Marathoner
“The key to running a good marathon is to not listen to anyone’s advice the last week before the race. That’s when people tend to do stupid things that disrupt all the input and training of the previous months.”
Don Kardong
“You can’t cram for the final. By that, I mean you’re not going to get any fitter during the last couple of weeks before the race. So don’t try cramming any last minute long runs or extra training. The best thing you can do for your body is rest.”
Gordone Bakoulis Bloch in The Essential Marathoner
“It’s the training that gets you to the starting line. It’s the pacing and energy management that gets you to the finish line.”
Kenneth Harkless
“The marathon is about taking on the realities of a given day, a given body, and given conditions, and simply do the best with them that one can, then watching to see what unfolds.”
Gordon Bakoulis Bloch, How to Train for and Run Your Best Marathon
“There’s not a better feeling than when you have found that moment of balance and harmony when both running and life come together. Then you know why you run and that you couldn’t live without it.”
Joan Benoit Samuelson
“Remember then if there’s one hard and fast rul in the distance-running game, it’s that there are no hard and fast rules, no panaceas, no magic formulas for putting it all together. To be able to take agood advice and adapt it to your needs – that’s the trick.”
Roy Kissen, “Fifteen Quick Training Tips,” in the The Complete Runner, Vol. 2
“The marathon. How an average runner becomes more than average.”
One of New Balance’s Top 10 Reasons to Run a Marathon
“Marathon runners mainly want to finish … Marathon racers want to improve.”
Joe Henderson
“I spent the first twenty years of my running career trying to run as many miles as I could as fast as I could. Then I spent the next twenty years trying to figure out how to run the least amount of miles needed to finish a marathon. And I’ve come to the conclusion the second way is much more enjoyable.”
Jeff Galloway
“Training for a marathon is much like climbing a ladder. Each ring is a short-term goal that must be met in sequence in order to reach the long-term goal at the top of the ladder.”
Richard Benyo, Making the Marathon You’re Event
“The marathon is a race of attrition. There are very, very few marathoners – even among the top level – who can go out fast and hold it for the entire race. Try to exercise self-control. That’s how you run a good marathon: by running the first half slower than the second.”
Mike Keohane in The Essential Marathoner
“There’s an old adage that for every second too fast per mile in the first half of the race, you’ll run at least 2 seconds slower at the end.”
Jeff Galloway
“More races are lost by training too long, too fast, or too often, than by running too short, too slow, or too seldom.”
Joe Henderson, Marathon Training
"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."
- Unknown
"I still bother with runners I call hamburgers. They're never going to run any record times, but they can always fulfill their own potential."
- Bill Bowerman, legendary University of Oregon track coach
"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."
- Sir Roger Bannister, first man to break the four minute mile
"Hills are speedwork in disguise."
- Frank Shorter, 1972 Olympic marathon gold medalist
"Most people run a race to see who is fastest. I run a race to see who has the most guts."
- Steve Prefontaine
"Running hills breaks up your rhythm and forces your muscles to adapt to new stresses. The result? You become a stronger runner!"
-Eamonn Coghlan (Irish Olympian and former World Record holder in the Indoor Mile)
"Training is a case of stress management. Stress and rest, stress and rest"
-Brooks Johnson (former Stanford distance coach and U.S. Olympic running coach)
"When I first started running, I was so embarrassed I'd walk when cars
passed me. I'd pretend I was looking at the flowers!"
-Joan Benoit Samuelson (first woman to win a gold medal in the Olympic
Marathon and one time world record holder in the marathon…2:21).
"I thought about how many preconceived prejudices would crumble when I trotted right along for 26 miles"
-Roberta Gibb, the first woman to finish The Boston Marathon
"Without ice cream, there would be darkness and chaos!"
-Marathon Champion Don Kardong on why he runs (so he can eat things like ice cream)
"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!"
-Emil Zatopek, after winning the gold medal in the Marathon at the Helsinki Olympic Games
"Mental will is a muscle that needs exercise, just like the muscles of the body" -Lynn Jennings, World Cross Country Champion
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