Sport is where an entire life can be compressed into a few hours, where the emotions of a lifetime can be felt on an acre or two of ground, where a person can suffer and die and rise again on six miles of trails through a New York City park. Sport is a theater where sinner can turn saint and a common man become an uncommon hero, where the past and the future can fuse with the present. Sport is singularly able to give us peak experiences where we feel completely one with the world and transcend all conflicts as we finally become our own potential.

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.

To keep from decaying, to be a winner, the athlete must accept pain - not only accept it, but look for it, live with it, learn not to fear it.

No matter how old I get, the race remains one of life's most rewarding experiences. My times become slower and slower, but the experience of the race is unchanged: each race a drama, each race a challenge, each race stretching me in one way or another, and each race telling me more about myself and others.

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

Life is the greatest experiment. Each of us is an experiment of one-observer and subject-making choices, living with them, recording the effects.

There are as many reasons for running as there are days in a year.... But mostly I run because I am an animal and a child.