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.

Hold your stretches for 15 seconds or so to get the most benefit. This is about the length of time it takes to sing the 'Happy Birthday' song twice.

Many people think that you must always be at the beginning in order to begin. That's not true at all. You can make a fresh start even if you're almost at the end. Today may seem the most ordinary of days. But it really isn't. Today is when you make a new beginning in running, whether you're the rankest beginner, the oldest and craggiest veteran in the business, or somewhere in between. It's always possible to start afresh.

Running has given me the courage to start, the determination to keep trying, and the childlike spirit to have fun along the way. Run often and run long, but never outrun your joy of running.

I never feel more alive than when I'm in great pain, struggling against insurmountable odds and untold adversity. Hardship? Suffering? Bring it! I've said it before and I've come to believe it: There's magic in misery.

Training is principally an act of faith. The athlete must believe in its efficacy; he must believe that through training he will become fitter and stronger; that by constant repetition of the same movements he will become more skillful and his muscles more relaxed. He must be a fanatic for hard work and enthusiastic enough to enjoy it.

Your toughness is made up of equal parts persistence and experience. You don't so much outrun your opponents as outlast and outsmart them, and the toughest opponent of all is the one inside your head.

Fatigue is the excuse we use to justify our lack of will.

Everyone in the race knows what it takes. Heart. Yes, natural ability and training play a role. But the race is all about who is willing to lay it on the line most. That's why I like to take off from the gun. Blast it. I may die, I may not. But I would rather die fighting.

Every run is a work of art, a drawing on each day's canvas. Some runs are shouts and some runs are whispers. Some runs are eulogies and others celebrations. When you're angry, a run can be a sharp slap in the face. When happy, a run is your song. And when your running progresses enough to become the chrysalis through which your life is viewed, motivation is almost beside the point. Rather, it's running that motivates you for everything else the day holds.

During the hard training phase, never be afraid to take a day off. If your legs are feeling unduly stiff and sore, rest. If you're at all sluggish, rest. Whenever you're in doubt, rest.

Of course it was painful, and there were times when, emotionally, I just wanted to chuck it all. But pain seems to be a precondition for this kind of sport. If pain weren't involved, who in the world would ever go to the trouble of taking part in sports like the triathlon or the marathon, which demand such an investment of time and energy? It's precisely because of the pain, precisely because we want to overcome that pain, that we can get the feeling, through this process, of really being alive--or at least a partial sense of it. Your quality of experience is based not on standards such as time or ranking, but on finally awakening to an awareness of the fluidity within action itself.

The marathon offers far more than a physical challenge... More than any other athletic event it favors the thinkers, the planners. The ability to develop and execute a training plan, to monitor and adjust to changing conditions, to set an appropriate pace, and to concentrate for hours on one task, all contribute more to marathon success than leg speed. We find satisfaction in a sport where natural ability won't cover up for ignorance or irrationality.

There are times when you run a marathon and you wonder, Why am I doing this? But you take a drink of water, and around the next bend, you get your wind back, remember the finish line, and keep going.

We all have bad days and bad workouts, when running gets ugly, when split times seem slow, when you wonder why you started. It will pass.

For me, running is a lifestyle and an art. I'm far more interested in the magic of it than the mechanics. It's that interest and exploration that make running fun for me. It's easy to become outcome-focused; for me the unfoldment of self is what is meaningful in running and outlasts any medals.

When it's pouring rain and you're bowling along through the wet, there's satisfaction in knowing you're out there and the others aren't.

No one is born a perfect runner. And none of us will become one. But through incremental steps, we can become better runners. And that's the beauty of our sport: There are no shortcuts, nothing is given to us; we earn every mile, and we earn every result.

When you run in the a.m. without eating breakfast, your pace will feel harder than it is, you won't be able to reach higher intensities, and you'll burn fewer calories as your body goes into conservation mode from the lack of fuel in your system. This all happens because, unless you're a midnight snacker, you've been fasting for nine to 12 hours between dinner and sunup. During this time, your muscle and liver glycogen and blood-glucose levels drop--all crucial energy sources that fuel your running. By eating shortly after you awake, you break the fast and begin to top off your energy stores. With a full tank, your body is then primed for exercise.

The pride you gain is worth the pain.