What makes a great endurance athlete is the ability to absorb potenial embarrassment, and to suffer without complaint. I was discovering that if it was a matter of gritting my teeth, not caring how it looked, and outlasting everybody else, I won. It didn't seem to matter what sport it was-in a straight-ahead, long-distant race, I could beat anybody. If it was a suffer-fest, I was good at it.

During our lives...we experience so many setbacks, and fight such a hand-to-hand battle with failure, head down in the rain, just trying to stay upright and to have a little hope.

A boo is a lot louder than a cheer, if you have 10 people cheering and one person booing, all you hear is the booing.

The riskiest thing you can do is get greedy.

The idea that anybody was forced, or pressured, or encouraged, is not true.

We are much better than we know.

My mom was such a strong character. I don't want to say she was like a man, but she was tough.