In every race there is a crucial moment when the body wants to quit. Then it needs imagination and mental tenacity to survive the crisis. Otherwise the penalty is defeat.

When you love to run and you train hard enough to really feel it, running is all about freedom. Also, I find that sharing the value of our sport is very important. When I think back on my life, it isn't the winning that I remember so much, it's the people who I met through running.

There is something about the ritual of the race - putting on the number, lining up, being timed - that brings out the best in us.

No matter what, though, I keep up my running. Running every day is a kind of lifeline for me, so I'm not going to lay off or quit just because I'm busy. If I used being busy as an excuse not to run, I'd never run again. I have only a few reasons to keep on running, and a truckload of them to quit. All I can do is keep those few reasons nicely polished.

There's more than what meets the eye. This race: it's a soul journey. It's about digging deep. It's about pushing past your limits. It's about doing something you never thought possible - something you never imagined you would try. It's about examining yourself in the raw, and coming to grips with who you see. It's about winning: proving to yourself, and to the world, that you can do great things. It's about life, and living to the fullest.

The most difficult part, when you decide to make running a part of your life style, is the basic initial commitment. Everybody says, 'I don't have the time.' It's up to you to say, 'I do have the time.' It ultimately becomes second nature. It becomes a habit, a routine part of your daily life.

A perfect run has nothing to do with distance. It's when your stride feels comfortable. You're on your toes trying to push it. Suddenly you realize you can open it up a bit more. You know you're at one with yourself and the environment. You're a little more alive than before you started.

Most runners get injured because they run the same pace on the same surface on the same shoe, day in and day out. By alternating the shoes you're running in, the slight modification will give you relief from a high-stress area. If you like one particular brand and style, you can just rotate a slightly worn shoe with a new pair.

I often hear someone say 'I'm not a real runner.' We are all runners, some just run faster than others. I never met a fake runner.

Running is as much about settling into a lifelong groove as it is about constantly changing course.

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.

It's not so much that I began to run, but that I continued.

I do, after all, love a challenge. Not just the result at the end, but the drudgery in the middle, the hard work, the sweat, the mess of transformation. I love the process of getting there, especially when 'there' isn't a fixed point, but the constant renaming as each finish line morphs into another start line.

When I come back from a run feeling like I accomplished something, like I'm a slightly different person than when I began, then I feel like I have had a good run.

If movement is a sign of life and stillness is death, running is an example of life most fully lived. It's beautiful.

When I started running, I thought I had to do everything 'right now' or the opportunity would be gone forever. I thought that if I missed a day of training due to injury, I had to run harder or longer the next day to make up for it. If I ran a bad workout, I had to run a good one the next day. If I missed a race, I had to find another one. Now I know that I have all the time I need. I no longer measure running by what it can do for me today. Instead, I love running for the promise and rewards it brings me year after year.

Running is just you, the work you put in, and the clock. You can't cheat yourself. If you don't put in the miles, you can't go to the starting line thinking you're going to pull a miracle out of nowhere. You get out exactly as much as you put in.

The most important thing is not the number of miles or the time it takes to finish a race or reach a goal. The reason to keep running is that out there is where I meet myself. Out there running is where I tell myself stories, where I cry spontaneously, where I am angry and happy, lost and found. As long as my legs work, I'll run.

Excuses always lead to a reckoning. We find reasons not to take that first step out the door, just as we find ways to be - or not to be - our best. Weakness, doubt, and fear are parts of the human condition. Facing them instead of fabricating an elaborate ruse to sidestep them - hoping to avoid them but ultimately carrying them in our hearts and mind and psyche until they whittle away at our being - give us a direct route to hope and dreams. Along the way, we reap all those other by-products that make suffering a tonic for our souls.

You find out a lot about yourself through athletics. If you're cut out to be a winner or a failure or a quitter, athletics will bring it out of you. You're always stripping yourself down to the bones of your personality. And sometimes you just get a glimpse of the kind of talent you've been given. Sometimes I run and I don't even feel the effort of running. I don't even feel the ground. I'm just drifting. Incredible feeling. All the agony and frustration, they're all justified by one moment like that.