The difference between the mile and the marathon is the difference between burning your fingers with a match and being slowly roasted over hot coals.
You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; in just the same way, you learn to love by loving.
Life is often compared to a marathon, but I think it is more like being a sprinter; long stretches of hard work punctuated by brief moments in which we are given the opportunity to perform at our best.
It is true that speed kills. In distance running, it kills anyone who does not have it.
The best pace is a suicide pace, and today looks like a good day to die.
If a man coaches himself, then he has only himself to blame when he is beaten.
I'm never going to run this again.
Spend at least some of your training time, and other parts of your day, concentrating on what you are doing in training and visualizing your success.
If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion.
It is better, I think, to begin easily and get your running to be smooth and relaxed and then to go faster and faster.
My thoughts before a big race are usually pretty simple. I tell myself: Get out of the blocks, run your race, stay relaxed. If you run your race, you'll win... channel your energy. Focus.
When you put yourself on the line in a race and expose yourself to the unknown, you learn things about yourself that are very exciting.
In my case, I thoroughly enjoy running 100-odd miles a week. If I didn't I wouldn't do it. Who can define happiness? To some, happiness is a warm puppy or a glass of cold beer. To me, happiness is running in the hills with my mates around me.
They say the breaks even up in the long run, and the trick is to be a long-distance runner.
I think there's only one sensible place for a person to be at 5:30 in the morning. That's in bed. And what am I doing? I'm out running. And I completely hate this.
To keep from decaying, to be a winner, the athlete must accept pain - not only accept it, but look for it, live with it, learn not to fear it.
To make your life a work of art, you must have the material to work with. The race, any race, is just such an experience.
Coming off the last turn, my thoughts changed from 'One more try...one more try...one more try...' to 'I can win! I can win! I can win!
The freedom of cross country is so primitive. It's woman vs. nature.
Once you have decided that winning isn't everything, you become a winner.
When I came back, after all those stories about Hitler and his snub, I came back to my native country, and I could not ride in the front of the bus. I had to go to the back door. I couldn't live where I wanted. Now what's the difference?
In a country where only men are encouraged, one must be one's own inspiration.
If I faltered, there would be no arms to hold me and the world would be a cold and forbidding place.
The single biggest change in middle-distance running, from the 1500 metres to 10,000 metres, has been the track surface.
It's an incredible feeling, 110,000 people energy at that level. What I realized from watching the first day of competition was that athletes that got excited and happy and got the fans into it and clapping, they did better. The athletes that took it too seriously, they didn't do as well as they'd hoped.
Follow AzQuotes on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Every day we present the best quotes! Improve yourself, find your inspiration, share with friends
or simply: