Everyone wins the marathon. We all have the same feeling at the start-nervous, anxious, excited. It is a broader, richer, and even with twenty-seven thousand people-more intimate experience than I found when racing in track. New York is the marathon that all the biggest stars want to win, but has also been the stage for an array of human stories more vast than any other sporting event.

I'm never going to run this again.

I'll never do that again!

You've got to look for tough competition. You've got to want to beat the best.

Sustained motivation is essential to achieving your potential.

Even today, in retirement, I find it very distracting if there is conversation during a run. I work out as much for my head as I do for my body. I'm a thinker. A lot of my ideas come to me more easily when I am running. That is why I like to run in the morning.

For every finish-line tape a runner breaks -- complete with the cheers of the crowd and the clicking of hundreds of cameras -- there are the hours of hard and often lonely work that rarely gets talked about.