Don Kardong Quotes

No doubt a brain and some shoes are essential for marathon success, although if it comes down to a choice, pick the shoes. More people finish marathons with no brains than with no shoes.

So here's my advice to city planners. Make your city runnable. Runners are the first wave of troops bringing human activity back to the urban core of any city. Where we go, others will follow. The connection between runnability and livability is so clear (at least to me), that it's surprising that new developments consistently leave pathways out of the plans.

Grizzly bears eat people without the benefit of music.

I know runners who have suffered a tick bite and ended up with Lyme disease. Ill take an angry moose any day.

You entered a marathon with hills? You idiot.

In those long, lonely miles you put in during the off-season, and in those knife-in-the-gut repetitions and hill repeats that buckly your knees - at that moment in almost every race when you ask yourself how much you're willing to hurt to catch one more runner - you can draw strength and inspiration from your running mates.

The key to running a good marathon is to not listen to anyone's advice the last week before the race. That's when people tend to do stupid things that disrupt all the input and training of the previous months.

Eventually, competition and adventure wane, and I enter my ibuprofen phase. Tweaky hamstrings and achy knees restrict mileage, but I continue running for health, sanity, and the ritual of a Sunday trail run with like-minded buddies. We discuss the nagging injuries that bedevil us, and remember the good old days when we were kings.

We (ultra runners) alternate between depression and stupidity.

Without ice cream there would be darkness and chaos.

If you run 100 miles a week, you can eat anything you want - Why? Because (a) you'll burn all the calories you consume, (b) you deserve it, and (c) you'll be injured soon and back on a restricted diet anyway.

Coaches know that a parent publicly scolding his kid after a race will not help the athlete perform better.

Prior to the 1976 Olympics, I was a 5,000m runner.

Avoid any diet that discourages the use of hot fudge.

A good teammate is someone willing to get outside of personal thoughts and emotions, a friend who tries to understand, appreciate, and encourage other members of the team.

Train at the same pace day after day, week after week, year after year, and that's the kind of running the body adapts to. But break out of that comfort zone with a little speedwork now and then, and the body will learn to deal with the new demands.

There's no such thing as a bad carbohydrate.

Runners like to train 100 miles per week because it's a round number. But I think 88 is a lot rounder.