I can't tell you why a particular athlete would leave a certain coach, but I can tell you there could be many reasons. They could have personality conflicts. They could have misunderstandings. Lots of stuff can happen.

I had as many doubts as anyone else. Standing on the starting line, we're all cowards.

I'm doing great heart-wise. I get a complete stress test once a year, and those have gone well. I have stents in two arteries, and they are holding up. My other arteries haven't shown any additional clogging.

Winning times in the New York City Marathon have not dropped all that much over the years, but rather U.S. runners went backward. In 1983, there were 267 U.S. men who broke 2:20 in a marathon, and by 2000 that number was down to 27.

You have to change things in order to get to where you want to go. And things might get worse. But if you're not getting where you want to be, already, in a sense, it's as bad as it can get.

Early in my career I was accused of being overconfident and even cocky, but I really was confident that I had done the training and didn't see any other reason to say otherwise.

I've found that my athletes run their best races after about 10 weeks of intense training.