We who run...are different from those who merely study us. We are out there experiencing what they are trying to put into words.

Like everyone else, I want to be challenged. I want to find out whether or not I am a coward. I want to see how much effort I can put out . . . what I can endure . . . if I measure up. Running allows that.

Do not tell me what to do, tell me what you do. Do not tell me what is good for me, tell me what is good for you. If, at the same time, you reveal the you in me, if you become a mirror to my inner self, then you have made a reader and a friend.

Exercise: you don't have time not to

The true runner is a very fortunate person. He has found something in him that is just perfect.

I run each day to preserve the self I attained the day before and to secure the self yet to be.

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.