Fitness has to be fun. If it is not play there will be no fitness. Play, you see, is where the process. Fitness is merely the product.

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.

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

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.

The desire to run comes from deep within us — from the unconscious, the intuitive, the instinctive. And that desire becomes a passion when the runner learns to race. Then, the race becomes all — the lovemaking of the runner.

On the roads, I can see truth revealed whole without thought or reason. There I experience the sudden understanding that comes unasked, unbidden. I simply rest, rest within myself, rest within the pure rhythm of my running. And I wait.

The real competition is against the little voice inside you that wants to quit