...there was some kind of connection between the capacity to love and the capacity to love *running*. The engineering was certainly the same: both depended on loosening your grip on your own desires, putting aside what you wanted and appreciating what you've got, being patient and forgiving and... undemanding...maybe we shouldn't be surprised that getting better at one could make you better at the other.

But yeah, Ann [Trason] insisted, running was romantic; and no, of course her friends didn't get it because they'd never broken through. For them, running was a miserable two miles motivated solely by size 6 jeans: get on the scale, get depressed, get your headphones on, and get it over with. But you can't muscle through a five-hour run that way; you have to relax into it, like easing your body into a hot bath, until it no longer resists the shock and begins to enjoy it.

We've created an unnatural form of running. It's not just the shoes, but we run on artificial surfaces - straight ahead, hard and steady - instead of speeding up and slowing down, reacting to the terrain with changes of pace and rhythm.

You don't have to be fast. But you'd better be fearless.

Make friends with pain, and you will never be alone.~Ken Chlouber, Colorado miner and creator of the Leadville Trail 100 mile race

Deny your nature, and it will erupt in some other, uglier way.

it’s easy to get outside yourself when you’re thinking about someone else.