It's very hard in the beginning to understand that the whole idea is not to beat the other runners. Eventually you learn that the competition is against the little voice inside you that wants you to quit.

There are as many reasons for running as there are days in the year, years in my life. But mostly I run because I am an animal and a child, an artist and a saint. So, too, are you. Find your own play, your own self-renewing compulsion, and you will become the person you are meant to be.

Have you ever felt worse after a run?

Anything that changes your values changes your behaviour.

I have a bumper sticker that Bowen created that says Regardless of my kids grades, they have an 'A' in my book'. Without play the child that still lives in all of us will always be incomplete. And not only physically, but creatively, intellectually, and spiritually as well.

We may think there is willpower involved, but more likely... change is due to want power. Wanting the new addiction more than the old one. Wanting the new me in preference to the person I am now.

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.