"Tough times don't last but tough people do."
A.C. Green
"If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward."
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Watching the world's best compete fires you up to achieve your own feats of greatness. When it comes to running, participation and spectating go hand in hand."
Kara Goucher
"Running is not, as it so often seems, only about what you did in your last race or about how many miles you ran last week. It is, in a much more important way, about community, about appreciating all the miles run by other runners, too."
Richard O'Brien
"Instead of thinking or saying, I have to finish this project or I have to pick up my kids, I stopped myself and tweaked my language: I get to work on this... I get to do speedwork... I get to go on a long run... Since then, I've shared the idea and gotten inspiring feedback. A friend told me she felt more joy while taking care of her kids. Another told me her running group spoke in I get to language for an entire run. A woman and her friends wore "I Get To Run" T-shirts on race day. A woman running the Turkey Trot in Santa Barbara on Thanksgiving morning came up to me and said, "What a beautiful day. Aren't we lucky we get to run? Gratitude is contagious. It's the smallest thing, but it has the power of something big. It's a shift in perspective that can open your head and your heart. And if you want, you get to try it."
Kristin Armstrong, blogger and columnist for Runner's World
"The joy was in the act of running and in the journey, not in the destination."
John Bingham
"My head monk asked how it was walking. I said it hurt without shoes. And he said, 'It hurts on the foot that's down, but the one that's up feels really good - so focus on that one'."
Deepak Chopra (on preparing to be ordained as a Buddhist monk)
"Success isn't how far you got, but the distance you traveled from where you started."
unknown
"Most people never get there. They're afraid or unwilling to demand enough of themselves and take the easy road, the path of least resistance. But struggling and suffering, as I now saw it, were the essence of a life worth living. If you're not pushing yourself beyond the comfort zone, if you're not constantly demanding more from yourself—expanding and learning as you go—you're choosing a numb existence. You're denying yourself an extraordinary trip."
Dean Karnazes, Ultramarathoner
"To get through the hardest journey we need take only one step at a time, but we must keep on stepping."
Ancient Proverb
"We amateur athletes are peculiarly devoted to our fitness, and our obsessions can sometimes be a burden to our loved ones and a mystery to everyone else.”
Peter Sagal in Road Scholar
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| Photo courtesy of The National Archive and a witty gas station owner during the U.S. fuel shortage in 1973. |
"No wonder so many people hated running; if you thought it was only a means to an end--an investment in becoming faster, skinnier, richer--then why stick with it...?"
Christoper McDougall, Born to Run
"It's a beautiful day, don't let it get away."
U2
"If you run, you are a runner. It doesn't matter how fast or how far. It doesn't matter if today is your first day or if you've been running for twenty years. There is no test to pass, no license to earn, no membership card to get. You just run."
John Bingham, Runner's World
"It's very hard in the beginning to understand that the whole idea is not to beat the other runners. Eventually you learn that the competition is against the little voice inside you that wants you to quit."
George Sheehan
"Everyone who has run knows that its most important value is in removing tension and allowing a release from whatever other cares the day may bring."
Jimmy Carter
"My sport is your sport's punishment."
(seen on a variety of t-shirts and bumper stickers)
"It hurts up to a point and then it doesn't get any worse."
Ann Trason
"I knew that if I allowed fear to overtake me, my journey was doomed. Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story..."
Cheryl Strayed on hiking the PCT, in Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
"If I used being busy as an excuse not to run, I'd never run again. I have only a few reasons to keep on running, and a truckload of them to quit. All I can do is keep those few reasons nicely polished."
Haruki Murakami
“The flower... means strength with femininity. I think that a lot of people say things like 'you run like a girl.' That doesn't mean that you have to run soft or you have to run dainty. It means that you're strong."
Alysia Montaño (after winning the women's 800 meter race to qualify for the 2012 US Olympic team)
I am always looking for others great running quotes. What are yours?