For every runner who tours the world running marathons, there are thousands who run to hear the leaves and listen to the rain, and look to the day when it is suddenly as easy as a bird in flight.

Sweat cleanses from the inside. It comes from places a shower will never reach.

The obsession with running is really an obsession with the potential for more and more life.

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.

The music of the marathon is a powerful martial 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.

You must listen to your body. Run through annoyance but not through pain.

To keep from decaying, to be a winner, the athlete must accept pain - not only accept it, but look for it, live with it, learn not to fear it.

Some think guts is sprinting at the end of a race. But guts is what got you there to begin with. Guts start back in the hills with 6 miles to go and you're thinking of how you can get out of this race without anyone noticing. Guts begin when you still have forty minutes of torture left and you're already hurting more than you ever remember.

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.

Don't be concerned if running or exercise will add years to your life, be concerned with adding life to your years.

To know you are one with what you are doing, to know that you are a complete athlete, begins with believing you are a runner.

And with each sprint, I strive to take as much pain as I can before I am forced to slow down.

It is not pain I seek. Pain is simply the symptom of lactic acid accumulating in my muscles, and I have to teach my body to handle lactic acid in races. You could as much say that I like lactic acid as suggest I like pain. 

Pain is to be used. At times, it warns me I am doing something wrong. At other times, it signals I am doing right.

If I am driving for the finish of a race and there is no pain, I know I have not yet pushed my body to its absolute limit. On the other hand, there is pain that commands to go this fast and no faster.

The runner is not a masochist. The runner does not enjoy pain. But between the runner and a personal best lies pain in quantity, both in training and in the race. And the pain, once endured, comes to have a value of its own. I do not seek suffering, but once it has been experienced, I feel somehow the better for it.

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.

Keep a record of your morning pulse. Lie in bed for a few minutes after you awaken and then take your pulse. As your training progresses, it will gradually become slower and after three months or so plateau out. From then on, if you awaken and find a rate of 10 or more beats higher, you have not recovered from your previous day's runs, races or stresses. Take the day or more off until the pulse returns to normal.

Every mile I run is my first. Every hour on the roads a new beginning. Every day I put on my running clothes, I am born again. Seeing things as if for the first time, seeing the familiar as unfamiliar, the common as uncommon... There is no other way to run, no other way to live.

There are those of us who are always about to live. We are waiting until things change, until there is more time, until we are less tired, until we get a promotion, until we settle down –until, until, until. It always seems as if there is some major event that must occur in our lives before we begin living. Live Now!