Out on the roads there is fitness and self-discovery and the persons we were destined to be.

Sport is an essential element of education.

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.

The key then is to find your own mountain, otherwise you will be competing with people who are not even in your event, and running up against the 'shoulds' and 'oughts' of that world, and the inevitable frustration and depression and feelings of failure. A person can be complete or incomplete, but one thing is sure, he cannot be someone else.

No matter how old I get, the race remains one of life's most rewarding experiences.

The obsession with running is really an obsession with the potential for more and more life.

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