The desire to run comes from deep within us — from the unconscious, the intuitive, the instinctive. And that desire becomes a passion when the runner learns to race. Then, the race becomes all — the lovemaking of the runner.

The more I run, the more I want to run, and the more I live a life conditioned and influenced and fashioned by my running. And the more I run, the more certain I am that I am heading for my real goal: to become the person I am.

To know you are one with what you are doing, to know that you are a complete athlete, begins with believing you are a runner.

Why race? The need to be tested, perhaps; the need to take risks; and the chance to be number one.

Sweat cleanses from the inside. It comes from places a shower will never reach.

The distance runner is mysteriously reconciling the separations of body and mind, of pain and pleasure, of the conscious and the unconscious. He is repairing the rent, and healing the wound in his divided self. He has found a way to make the ordinary extraordinary; the commonplace unique; the everyday eternal.

Running is just such a monastery- a retreat, a place to commune with God and yourself, a place for psychological and spiritual renewal.