Boston

April 20, 2009

Motivation Through Quotation

These are some of the best running quotes you’ll find on the free market. If this is the last thing you read out the door I have faith that you’re going to kill it. My favs in bold. If I don’t fire another one off good luck to everyone tomorrow and enjoy every mile.

“To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.”

“Some people create with words, or with music, or with a brush and paints. I like to make something beautiful when I run. I like to make people stop and say, “I’ve never seen anyone run like that before.” It’s more then just a race, it’s a style. It’s doing something better then anyone else. It’s being creative.”

“Having a true faith is the most difficult thing in the world. Many will try to take it from you.”

“Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.”

“You cannot propel yourself forward by patting yourself on the back.”

“A man can fail many times, but he isn’t a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.”

“Life’s battles don’t always go to the strongest or fastest man,
But sooner or later the man who wins is the fellow who thinks he can.”

“Success isn’t how far you got, but the distance you traveled from where you started.”

“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”

“If you fail to prepare, prepare to fail.”

Something inside of me just said ‘Hey, wait a minute, I want to beat him,’ and I just took off.

You have to wonder at times what you’re doing out there. Over the years, I’ve given myself a thousand reasons to keep running, but it always comes back to where it started. It comes down to self-satisfaction and a sense of achievement.

What kind of crazy nut would spend two or three hours a day just running?
(This is how Steve reacted in Junior High when he saw the High School Cross country team running)

“A race is a work of art that people can look at and be affected in as many ways they’re capable of understanding.”

“A lot of people run a race to see who is fastest. I run to see who has the most guts, who can punish himself into exhausting pace, and then at the end, punish himself even more. Nobody is going to win a 5,000 meter race after running an easy 2 miles. Not with me. If I loose forcing the pace all the way, well, at least I can live with myself.”
–Other Quotes

“Man imposes his own limitations, don’t set any”
-Anthony Bailey

“Human beings are made up of flesh and blood, and a miracle fiber called courage”
-George Patton

Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.
-Japanese Proverb

Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up.
It knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed.
Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up.
It knows that it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re a lion or a gazelle
when the sun comes up you’d better be running.
(But, unless you’re a runner, you won’t understand.)
-Anon

Real athletes run others just play games

Champions do not become champions when they win the event, but in the hours, weeks, months and years they spend preparing for it. The victorious performance itself is merely the demonstration of their championship character.
– T. Alan Armstrong

The greatest pleasure in life, is doing the things people say we cannot do.
– Walter Bagehot

My feeling is that any day I am too busy to run is a day that I am too busy.
–John Bryant

Cowards die many times before their deaths, the valiant never taste death but once.
–Julius Ceaser

The nine inches right here; set it straight and you can beat anybody in the world.
–Sebastian Coe
(as he said this Coe held his fingers up to his head)

The great thing about athletics is that it’s like poker, sometimes you know what’s in your hand and it may be a load of rubbish, but you’ve got to keep up the front.
–Sebastian Coe

Tomorrow is another day, and there will be another battle!
–Sebastian Coe
(a few minutes after a 2nd place finish in the 800m Olympic Games final in Moscow 1980,
he later won the 1500m , he had been favored to win the 800m)

Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
– Confucius

All it takes is all you got.
–Marc Davis

Run like hell and get the agony over with.
–Clarence DeMar

The five S’s of sports training are: Stamina, Speed, Strength, Skill and Spirit;
but the greatest of these is Spirit.
–Ken Doherty

The only tactics I admire are do-or-die
–Herb Elliott

Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors.
Try to be better than yourself.
–William Faulkner

You have a choice. You can throw in the towel, or you can use it to wipe the sweat off of your face.
–Gatorade

Ability is what you are capable of doing.
Motivation determines what you do.
Attitude determines how well you do it.
–Lou Holtz

It is true that speed kills. In distance running, it kills anyone who does not have it.
–Brooks Johnson

If you run 100 miles a week, you can eat anything you want — Why? Because
(a) you’ll burn all the calories you consume,
(b) you deserve it, and
(c) you’ll be injured soon and back on a restricted diet anyway.
–Don Kardong

Other people may not have high expectations of me, but I have high expectations for myself.
– Shannon Miller

Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.
— Will Rogers

When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.
–Theodore Roosevelt

You can fight without ever winning,
but never ever, win without a fight.
–Rush (the Band)

I had as many doubts as anyone else. Standing on the starting line, we’re all cowards.
– Alberto Salazar

“The thing about Pre is that he ran as hard as he could every race, and if you were going to beat him, you were going to have to run harder than he did.”
–Bob Kennedy

“When you are a up-and-coming runner in the U.S., and making some breakthroughs in distances, Pre is still the man that you are compared to. It’s always based on Pre.”
–Bob Kennedy

It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness.
–Seneca

Do a little more each day than you think you possibly can.
-Lowell Thomas

Good judgement is the result of experience, experience is the result of bad judgment.
–Mark Twain

Stadiums are for spectators. We runners have nature and that is much better.
–Juha Vaatainen

Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.
–Booker T. Washington

Running is real and relatively simple…but it ain’t easy.
–Mark Will-Weber

Once you’re beat mentally, you might as well not even go to the starting line.
–Todd Williams

“The will to win is worthless, without the will to prepare.”

“Cross Country: No half times, no time outs, no substitutions. It must be the only true sport”

“Running is a mental sport…and we’re all insane!”

Learn to run when feeling the pain: then push harder.

“If you want to win a race, you have to go a little berserk.”

Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss it you will land among the stars
- Les Brown

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

If you want to make God laugh, just try and make plans for the future.
- Ron Litzler

The true test of a man’s character is what he does when he knows he won’t get caught.
-Anonymous

Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.
-Thomas Jefferson

“No one ever drowned in sweat.”

“Gold medals aren’t really made of gold. They’re made of sweat, determination, and a hard-to-find alloy called guts.”
-Dan Gable

“To win without risk is to triumph without glory.”
-Pierre Cornielle

“In running, it doesn’t matter whether you come in first, in the middle of the pack, or last. You can say ‘I have finished.’ There is a lot of satisfaction in that.”

“”Only think of two things – the report of the pistol and the tape. When you hear one, run like hell until you break the other.”
-Sam Mussabini

“It’s rude to count people as you pass them. Out loud.”
-Adidas ad

“Cross Country – Finally a practical use for golf courses.”

“Some people don’t have the guts for distance racing. The polite term for them is sprinters.”

“Cross Country philosophy…the faster you run the faster you’re done.”

“Pain is only temporary,
Pride is forever,
Pain passes with time and Time passes,
therefore Pain is just a strain on the Brain without Refrain,
and that’s why Cross Country runners are Insane.”
-t shirt

“Listen to your body. Do not be a blind and deaf tenant.”
-Dr. George Sheehan

Sunshine is delicious,
Rain is refreshing,
Wind braces us up,
Snow is exhilarating,
There’s really no such thing as bad weather,
Only different kinds of good weather.”