How you start is important, very important, but in the end it is how you finish that counts. It is easier to be a self-starter than a self-finisher. The victor in the race is not the one who dashes off swiftest but the one who leads at the finish. In the race for success, speed is less important than stamina. The sticker outlasts the sprinter in life's race. In America we breed many hares but not so many tortoises.
Hurdlers are sprinters with a problem. They're not satisfied just to sprint. Anybody can sprint, some not as well as others of course, but anybody can sprint. Not everybody can run hurdles. There's an extra dimension involved. Hurdlers would make a good subject for a thesis in psychology - they are of apersuasion that just needs an extra dimension.
I'm fascinated by the sprinters. They suffer so much during the race just to get to the finish, they hang on for dear life in the climbs, but then in the final kilometers they are transformed and do amazing things. It's not their force per se that impresses me, but rather the renaissance they experience. Seeing them suffer throughout the race only to be reborn in the final is something for fascination.
To a sprinter, the hundred-yard dash is over in three seconds, not nine or ten. The first 'second' is when you come out of the blocks. The next is when you look up and take your first few strides to attain gain position. By that time the race is actually about half over. The final 'second' - the longest slice of time in the world for an athlete - is that last half of the race, when you really bear down and see what you're made of. It seems to take an eternity, yet is all over before you can think what's happening.
Love affairs are for emotional sprinters; the pleasures of love are for the emotional marathoners.
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.
I'm a decent sprinter and I can gun a motorcycle from zero to suicidal in less than ten seconds.
For some of us love comes into the room, kicks her shoes off, finds the most comfortable sofa, and lies down, rests, has no intention of going anywhere. For others love walks in smoking a cigarette, checking her watch every two seconds, jittery, with one hand on the doorknob, heart rate up, always in sprinter’s position, ready to run.
A short story is a sprint, a novel is a marathon. Sprinters have seconds to get from here to there and then they are finished. Marathoners have to carefully pace themselves so that they don't run out of energy (or in the case of the novelist-- ideas) because they have so far to run. To mix the metaphor, writing a short story is like having a short intense affair, whereas writing a novel is like a long rich marriage.
It's always been too slow for me. Playing. The pace of things. I'm a fast sprinter. The trouble was, after playing in the group for a few months, I couldn't reach that point.
To a sprinter, the hundred-yard dash is over in three seconds, not nine or ten.
Before me, sprinters retired at 23 or 24. I run because I still like it, I can make a living, and I feel I was born to do it. And because people tell me I can't do it.
I realized that I was more of a sprinter than a marathon man. With a long, long project, I get bored easily.
I am basically turning football players into sprinters for a while. When we first talked about it, I didn't know how my expertise could be used.
I don't have a sprinter's body.
You need to become more than one type of athlete. You have to be a sprinter, a weight man and a distance guy all in one.
I always wanted to be a sprinter.
When I was young, I was too slow. I thought I must learn to run fast by practicing to run fast, so I ran 100 meters fast 20 times. Then I came back, slow,slow,slow. People said, 'Emil, you are crazy. You are training like a sprinter.'
I am a bit different from the other sprinters because, I would say, I can run many different ways while the other guys they just came on and they can only run one way.
Worrying gets you nowhere. If you turn up worrying about how you're going to perform, you've already lost. Train hard, turn up, run your best and the rest will take care of itself.
or simply:
