Running well is a matter of having the patience to persevere when we are tired and not expecting instant results.

If you do what you did yesterday you'll be beaten. If you do today what others are doing you'll be competitive. To win you much be doing today what others will be doing tomorrow.

A lot of people don't realize that about 98 percent of the running I put in is anything but glamorous: 2 percent joyful participation, 98 percent dedication! It's a tough formula. Getting out in the forest in the biting cold and the flattening heat, and putting in kilometer after kilometer.

If you feel bad at 10 miles, you're in trouble. If you feel bad at 20 miles, you're normal. If you don't feel bad at 26 miles, you're abnormal.

Some might say that it's easier to be the runner than the runner's family.

When I was about 14 or 15, and running in a pretty muddy cross country race, one of my shoes stuck in the mud and came off. Boy, was I wild. To think that I had trained hard for this race and didn't do up my shoelace tightly enough! I really got aggressive with myself, and I found myself starting to pass a lot of runners. As it turned out, I improved something like twenty places in that one race. But I never did get my shoe back.

Running well is a matter of having the patience to persevere when we are tired and not expecting instant results.