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.

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.

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.

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

Happiness is different from pleasure. Happiness has something to do with struggling and enduring and accomplishing.

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.

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