If you are training properly, you should progress steadily. This doesn't necessarily mean a personal best every time you race ... Each training session should be like putting money in the bank. If your training works, you continue to deposit into your 'strength' account ... Too much training has the opposite effect. Rather than build, it tears down. Your body will tell when you have begun to tip the balance. Just be sure to listen to it.

For a couple of days after chemotherapy, food tastes really bland, even the best foods. I haven't been sick, but have been a little tired. I haven't lost any weight.

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.

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.

I'm never going to run this again.

Another inspiration that has helped me get through has been Lance Armstrong's story. My cancer is not nearly as bad as his, but I believe in staying motivated and keeping as fit as you can.

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