Patience and pace judgement are still more important for most runners than speed and aggression. Even-pace or negative splits by steady tortoises will almost always defeat the fast-starting hares.

I like to think I live a virtuous life: being honest, generous and all of these good things. But the courage comes out when those things are tested. And the point in my life when those things are tested is in races. You can be courageous or not courageous, but that in and of itself is not a virtue. It's when your virtues are tested that you rise to the occasion or not.

The challenge and energy running requires may be a selfish one, but it actually motivates me to be stronger in my relationships.

If you could determine the one bit of running advice dispensed and received more often than any other, it would probably be 'Go out slow.' It would also be the one bit of running advice most frequently ignored. But it seems as though everyone—no matter their experience level—has recurring bouts of going out too fast and then struggling at the end. Mathematically it doesn't matter if you run the first half of a 10k in 20 minutes and the second half in 25 minutes, or vice versa, but I guarantee it will feel a lot different. It's reasonably well-established that for distances greater than 5k, you will average a better speed over the course of a race if you start more slowly than your goal pace, and gradually build up to it. The problem is our bodies naturally want to go faster while we feel fresh and slower when we feel tired. It takes some mental discipline to overrule our physical tendencies. Resist the urge to bask in how great you feel at the start of a race and how effortless it all is. Instead, remember your last gasping, stumbling finish. Once you experience the thrill of passing mobs of burnt-out bonkers in the latter miles, you won't want to go back.

No matter who you are, no matter where you are in your training, you will come to the point where you think you have hit the wall of your limitations. It doesn't really matter if it's running a mile in four minutes, or finishing a 10k in under an hour. At some point, you have to make the decision to do more than you ever thought you could. No matter what the voices in your head are telling you, when you keep going, something magical happens.

An athlete who tells you the training is always easy and always fun simply hasn't been there. Goals can be elusive which makes the difficult journey all the more rewarding.

If you aim for a lifetime of running, you will hit bumps on the road. Heck, let's be honest: You will hit something that looks like Mount Everest, and on the back side a gulf as deep as the Grand Canyon. The challenges we each encounter are uniquely ours, but they will come. We all have good years and bad. Shift happens...

Life requires us to make adjustments, to change course. Some years, when the waters of your life are calm and you feel a sense of control at the helm, you'll race hard, and hope for personal bests. Other years, beset by a perfect storm of turbulence, you'll have to settle for less. That's okay. Less is still something; just don't surrender and abandon ship.

Fall in love with running and you won't get sick of it – you won't be someone who used to run years ago – or someone who wishes they had the motivation to run but just can't seem to bring themselves to do it. You have to be IN LOVE with this sport to keep doing it month after month, year after year – even when the going gets tough. That's what it's like for me and running – it's a till death do us part type of relationship.

Some people live to run. I don't believe that anyone should live their lives as if they have nothing else (but running). I run because it makes me feel real. On top of the pain and the thrill and exhilaration, running makes me feel alive. I don't live to run, I run so I can live.

Don't underestimate the importance of easy days. Easy days help you beat fatigue, to keep fatigue from beating you.

Don't get frustrated or give up if you've recently upped your training and aren't seeing big results yet. Sometimes, it takes years for training to 'kick' in, but when it does, you'll run like you have a rocket pack strapped to your back. Fight the urge to give up!

Ever wonder how far Rocky ran in his famous training run in Rocky II? One local Philadelphia magazine columnist decided to find out by piecing together the routes Rocky could have traveled from scene to scene. What he discovers in this entertaining piece might surprise you... Rocky wasn't just a boxer. He was an ultra-marathoner.

The benefits and opportunities of running are available to anyone. You don't have to be born a natural athlete, and you don't have to be uniquely gifted. A life-shaping experience is there for the taking, waiting right outside your door.

A good workout is when you make your dry fit shirt look like false advertising.

Running is alone time that lets my brain unspool the tangles that build up over days—work-related grief, everyday family-life frustration, and the occasional bit of deeper-seeded crap that gets labeled depression and the like. I run, pound it out on the pavement, channel that energy into my legs, and when I'm done with my run, I'm done with it. I'm a happier and healthier person now.

If you want to become a better runner, you have to run more often. It is that easy.

You've got to get up every morning with determination if you're going to go to bed with satisfaction.

What sort of runner are YOU?

For the intrinsic runner, running is personal and spiritual. It is about inner peace and solitude, communing with the elements and gaining an inherent satisfaction from the sights, sounds and sensations of running. If an intrinsic runner competes, they do so against themselves, because satisfaction and a sense of achievement come from within rather than from timings on a board. Most intrinsic runners wouldn't be too bothered if they never went running in a group or a race field again. 

The extrinsic runner is a far more sociable character when it comes to hitting the bricks, and will gain running satisfaction from being in a group and comparing themselves to others. Although they won't be unaware of the more Zen aspects of running, their real kick comes in how their running relates to other people's.

Once you've established which kind of runner you are, it will be far easier to plan your running life around the aspects that inspire you and to ignore what is likely to put you off. 

Intrinsic runners should look to make their running as sensory, as spiritually uplifting, as downright interesting and as personally challenging as possible, entering races for the experience of the whole event rather than worrying about setting a new personal best.

Extrinsic runners can give themselves a considerable motivational boost by entering races or by joining a running club or group. Don't assume you'll have to miss out on the travelling either, as there are many exciting and highly competitive races around the world.

I once thought the best racing memories would center on fast times and long distances run. They don't. They focus on places traveled and people met. My ability to race fast is gone now. But the best experiences of racing are lasting and always being renewed... I don't want to run races just to reach some arbitrary round-number goal in the distant future, but for what each race gives me immediately. It automatically takes me places where I wouldn't otherwise go, and automatically puts me closest to the people most like myself. I can think of no finer way to spend the rest of a running lifetime than at weekly races.

Even if you haven't actually run, even if you're overweight, even if you were always the kid picked last in gym class, even if you're clumsy, even if you don't own a single piece of fitness equipment, you ARE a runner. You don't have to run fast to be a runner. You don't have to be skinny to be a runner. You don't have to run marathons to be a runner. You only have to want to run. Take your first step along your path to joyful running right now by writing down all the reasons you can't run, can't be fit, and can't possibly become an athlete. Then crumple up that list with all the force you can muster and toss it in the trash. Not the trash in your kitchen, where you can get it back out and try on those 'can'ts' again for size, but in the trash by the curb. Trash those can'ts. You can run. You are a runner.