The words of the social critic Eric Hoffer were ringing true: "Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and turns into a racket."

The reason we race isn't so much to beat each other... but to be with each other.

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

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

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.

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

If you don't have answers to your problems after a four-hour run, you ain't getting them.