Is it just us, or is autumn the best time of year to be a runner? Still warm enough for shorts (hopefully), but just cool enough to inspire you to pick up the pace. And you've taken advantage of the long summer days to log more miles or train for a race, so you're more fit than you've been all year. But this otherwise ideal season is fleeting, and without the right focus, you could lose all you've gained as winter rolls around. So make the most of your summer fitness and build on it. Lots of runners get motivated by choosing a race as a goal, but use whatever target works for you, whether that's building up to your first 10-mile run, running five times a week, or logging 100 miles in a month. Keeping it all going through the lovely autumn is the key to staying with it through the more challenging winter.

People recognize that running a marathon involves a lot of effort and hard work. I may have a certain amount of talent to run well, but talent on its own doesn't count for very much unless I go out and do the training. That's true about anyone, at any level, wishing to run a marathon. To rise to the challenge of the marathon and complete the 26-mile distance involves a huge expenditure of effort and determination.

After all, the whole object in running is to test yourself. To find out what you're made of. To accomplish something you can be proud of no matter where you finish.

If you can't run then walk. And if you can't walk, then crawl. Do whatever you have to do. Just keep moving forward and never, ever give up.

Character. You know you have it when it is easier to get up than to stay down.

Within every run, there are successes and defeats. As an advanced runner, you learn that you can make a conscious decision to focus on either the negative or the positive. Sure, you can always find defeats: not going as fast as you had hoped, not feeling light on your feet, not having time to run as far as you expected. But you can always find successes just as easily. Some days, it's going farther or pushing harder than ever before. Some days, the success is just getting out the door. Some days - on the really rough days - a success can be as simple as staying in good spirits and reminding yourself that tomorrow is a fresh opportunity to feel better. It's a lesson that, once learned on the run, proves invaluable when applied to other aspects of life.

It comes with age, of course. The older we get, the greater the shift in proportions from life ahead of us to the living behind us, the more we look back and the less ahead.... But runners can't live in the past. Once we quit looking ahead, we become ex-runners... The past is a nice place to visit, but we can't live there.

Enjoy running for the sake of running, not the rewards of winning a race. George Sheehan said, 'Once you have decided that winning isn't everything, you become a winner.' This is the secret to longevity in running. You will never burn out if you love the process instead of the outcome.

Right before you head out running, it can be hard to remember exactly why you're doing it. You often have to override a nagging sense of futility, lacing up your shoes, telling yourself that no matter how unlikely it seems right now, after you finish you will be glad you went. It's only afterward that it makes sense, although even then it's hard to rationalize why. You just feel right. After a run, you feel at one with the world, as though some unspecified, innate need has been fulfilled. 

You may start the day feeling rotten. But that doesn't mean you have to end the day that way. You can put out the effort and feel better because of it. Forget inspiration. All you need is effort. Your effort will create good works. Your good works will make you feel better. Feeling better will help you create more good works, and so it goes.

Feelings change. Meanwhile, let your effort be constant and unflagging. It's impossible to summon up inspiration every day. But you can almost always summon up the effort, and the effort will in itself motivate you. Effort is a product of will. Some days you are just going to have to slog away. If you make the effort, inspiration will follow, and if it doesn't, well, at least you will have done the work, made the effort - and you can be proud of that.

Work breeds inspiration. The more you work, the more effort you put forth, the more inspired you will be.

One thing you'll learn after you cross the big finish line, and all the little finish lines in the middle, is that rarely will you find glory without struggle. The things that are easy? The things that make sense? Those aren't the things you talk about for years to come. They aren't the things you hang on your wall with pride.

Games require skill. Running requires endurance, character, pride, physical strength, and mental toughness. Running is a test, not a game. A test of faith, belief, will, and trust in ones self. So hardcore that it needs a category all to itself to define the pain. When game players criticize, it's because they aren't willing to understand, not because they're stronger. Running is more than a sport; it's a lifestyle. If you have to ask us why we run, you'll never understand, so just accept.

Running is real and relatively simple — but it ain't easy. It's a challenge. It takes work. It takes commitment. You have to get out of bed, get out the door, down the street. You have to risk getting cold, wet, or too hot. Maybe whack some over-zealous hound on the snout — or 'Hot Rod Harry' on the hood — every now and again. And, of course, you have to take your very first run.

No matter how hard it was, or how much I didn't want to run that day, I always felt better afterward. Some days, that's all that got me out the door. The best part was at the end of every day, when I had a sharp sense of having accomplished something measurable and definable. I won a little victory every day that nobody could take away from me. I don't have that sense when I don't run.

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!

No matter how many years you've been running, the hardest part is always taking that first step out the door. The trick is to always remember that you'll feel better after a run than before it.

When you're hurting in the middle of a workout or race, it's easy to hold back or let yourself off the hook from running faster. But regret is the worst feeling to me. You want to challenge yourself. The more you get out of yourself, you start wondering, Maybe I could get even more. It's fun to see what you can get your body to do.

I had to do something to shake up my life and get some sense of control and trust in the world and along the way fill the hollow space. I needed to rebel against those negative forces, to scream so loud and for so long that the anger living inside me would evacuate forever. But instead of screaming, I ran.

Running may be solitary at times, but runners often use the inspiration of others to motivate them, both in training and racing. Heroes and heroines can inspire us. I have a photograph of Grete Waitz, nine-­time winner of the New York City Marathon, that I keep on my refrigerator door. It inspires me and reminds me that everyone - even Grete Waitz - lacks motivation at some point, and we all can get through those moments.

When I get tired, I remember those who can't run, what they'd give to have this simple gift I take for granted, and I run harder for them. I know they would do the same for me.