I received the best advice for running I ever heard: 'You're not going to win, so just relax. If it feels like work, you're running too hard.

Running is the heart of what it means to be human.

For nearly 2 million years, our ancestors survived and thrived and spread across the planet because they could run other mammals into heat exhaustion.

Sometimes,' she said, 'it takes a woman to bring out the best in a man.

Only recently have we come up with the technology to turn lazing around into a way of life. We've taken our sinewy, durable, hunter-gatherer bodies and plunked them into an artificial world of leisure.

Faced with the almost inescapable conclusion that it had been selling lemons, Nike shifted into make-lemonade mode. Jeff Pisciotta became head of a top-secret and seemingly impossible project: finding a way to make a buck off a naked foot.

Everyone is built for running.