Once you have decided that winning isn't everything, you become a winner.

Like everyone else, I want to be challenged. I want to find out whether or not I am a coward. I want to see how much effort I can put out . . . what I can endure . . . if I measure up. Running allows that.

Life is a positive-sum game. Everyone from the gold medallist to the last finisher can rejoice in a personal victory.

The study of motivation goes back to the Greeks. Their sports were essential to their education. They saw in sports the integration of body, mind and soul, the creation of beauty, the mastering of athletics, and the challenge of competition. A French sociologist points this out. "Sports," he wrote, was part of the education of the citizen. He was expected to engage in exercise for a whole series of reasons that had to do with the shaping of the citizen; the relation between moral good and physical good; and the growth of a person.

Success means having the courage, the determination, and the will to become the person you believe you were meant to be.

I have found my hero and he is me.

There is nothing more certain than the defeat of the man who gives up.