Browsing Topic Best Distance Runner Quotes

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

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.

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

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

There’s no such thing as bad weather – only the wrong clothes.

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.

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

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

There’s no such thing as bad weather, just soft people.

Good things come slow, especially in distance running.

You learn to run like a sprinter, you’ll be a great distance runner

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

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.

Run like hell and get the agony over with.

They say the breaks even up in the long run, and the trick is to be a long-distance runner.

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.

Running hills breaks up your rhythm and forces your muscles to adapt to new stresses. The result? You become stronger.

There’s no such thing as a bad carbohydrate.

It’s at the borders of pain and suffering that the men are separated from the boys.

I came in on this movie after there had been a director and I came in after Tom Courtenay had talked to Ron Harwood about making a movie. So, you know Tom and Albert Finney had been friends since the beginning of their career as they became stars around the same time – Tom always reminds me that Albert was first with Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and then Tom with The Long Distance Runner.

The real competition is against the little voice inside you that wants to quit

The difference between a jogger and a runner is an entry blank.

Finland has produced so many brilliant distance runners because back home it costs $2.50 a gallon for gas.

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.

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.

We’ve got to be long distance runners on the spiritual path. We want to run as fast as we can, but at the same time realize that if God isn’t at the end of that 100 yards, we don’t fall flat of exhaustion. We’ve got to have whatever rhythm it takes to be able to go on for incarnations until we find that state of perfection we’ve been seeking.

In the big city, if the man next door happens to be a slum landlord, a Mafia bag man, or a long distance runner, what does it matter, as long as he puts his garbage out on Tuesdays?

You shall become the person you are.

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.

In the achievement of greater performances, of beating formidable rivals, the athlete defeats fear and conquers himself.

It’s very hard in the beginning to understand that the whole idea is not to beat the other runners. Eventually you learn that the competition is against the little voice inside you that wants you to quit.

Everyone is an athlete. The only difference is that some of us are in training, and some are not.

When you run the marathon, you run against the distance, not against the other runners and not against the time.

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.

The Athlete defeats fear and conquers himself!