Quotations - Running or Otherwise
On making really special friends through running:
"Feel right here"
- Tom Cali describing his recent groin injury
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On interval training:
"Anyone can run the last one hard"
- Attributed to Scott Roycroft by Tony de Boef
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Another take on interval training:
"You think more clearly after running intervals. (16x400 today)."
- Ken Davis
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Or maybe the opposite is true:
"A coach from my high school days had the opinion, based on runner behavior at the finish of races,
that every mile of a race knocks 10 points off your IQ. Maybe it's only 5 for a quality workout."
- Bill Bahnfleth
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On deciding whether to move track workouts indoors for the winter:
"When you're in, you're in; when you're out, you're out"
- Greg Fredericks
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On race psychology:
"When you lead, you lead; when you follow, you follow."
- Greg Fredericks
[Editor's Note: The above two quotations led to discussion on the NVRC listserve of the "Fredericks Algorithm". After some
refinement by the listserve members, the algorithm can be stated:
Denote by ~X the set theoretic negation (complement) of a statement X, the Fredericks Algorithm is:
Input: X
Output: "When you X you X; when you ~X you ~X"
The algorithm is tautological from the logical standpoint, but from the rhetorical, or "coaching" standpoint, it is "reinforcing".]
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On post-race psychology:
"Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Never Again!"
- Marvin Hall, soon after crossing the finish line of his first Ironman
"I could knock a half hour off my next Ironman if I would ....."
- Marvin Hall, 12 hours after crossing the finish line of his first Ironman
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On where we run...
"Finally, a good use for golf courses."
"Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads."
(a little obscure but good...it is from one of the 'Back To The Future' movies)
- both contributed by Mike Dooris
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Some Cross-Country team slogans:
"If you can read this, then I'm not in last place"
- from Dave Eggler, who recommends this for the back of a team shirt.
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"Run Hard or Run Home"
- from Laura Snyder's high school team shirt
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"SC-XCountry: Track Runners Going to Hill"
- submitted by Jim Kisenwether
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"I Love Hills!"
- Eric Tien reports that a cross country coach used this as a 'team yell'
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From the 'running is life' school of philosophy:
"Every day above ground is a good day. Every day I can run is a very good day."
- Michael S. Bowen
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Some hard-core running quotes:
"Mental will is a muscle that needs excercise, like the muscles of the body. "
- Lynn Jennings
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"The will to win means nothing without the will to prepare."
- Juma Ikangaa
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"A lot of people run a race to see who's the fastest. I run to see who has the most guts."
- Steve Prefontaine
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"I believe in the runner’s high, and I believe that those who are passionate about running are the ones who experience it to the fullest degree possible. To me, the runner’s high is a sensational reaction to a great run! It’s an exhilarating feeling of satisfaction and achievement. It’s like being on top of the world, and truthfully… there’s nothing else quite like it!"
- Sasha Azevedo
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"Run like hell and get the agony over with."
- Clarence DeMar
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"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."
- Dr. George Sheehan.
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Running fatalism:
"Running is a lot like life. Only 10 percent of it is exciting. 90 percent of it is slog and drudge."
- Dave Bedford, English distance runner who occasionally put in 200 miles a week in training.
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On the Nittany Valley Half-Marathon:
"It's a very tough course, especially after about mile 7. The last mile is designed to make you see God."
- Marty Mazur
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"I was looking for God during the last mile, but I didn't see him. I guess he finished ahead of me too."
- Albert Mabus, last male finisher at the 2001 NVHM
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In response to, "Think it's gonna rain today?":
"I'm not that kind of meteorologist."
- Dr. Ken Davis
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On playing an elaborate practical joke:
"I was having second thoughts last night. But you know, sometimes a bad idea is just too bad to resist."
- Mike Dooris
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A perspective on life in a college town, submitted by Rick Fie:
"D'ye think th' colledges has much to do with th' progress iv of the wurruld?" asked Mr Hennessy.
"D'ye think," said Mr Dooley, "tis th' mill that makes th' water run?"
- from Colleges and Degrees, by Finley Peter Dunne
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On teaching a real estate class:
"It's just real estate; it's not like it's brain surgery."
- Tom Cali, Realtor
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On taking it easy, submitted by Mike Dooris:
Steve & Carol Gentry -- young and recently retired (I hate that)-- spotted strolling across campus, were asked,
"Why was Steve looking at his watch? Do you guys really need to be anywhere in particular?"
Steve's apparently serious answer: "No, I'm checking to see what month it is."
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On the paving over of State College, PA, submitted by Ken Davis:
"If I were there I'd be chaining myself to a tree stump right about now."
- Current out-of-towner Dave Boger, discussing plans
to pave the railroad bed leading out to Toftrees.
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From the Bard:"These high wild hills and rough uneven ways draw out our miles and make them wearisome."
- William Shakespeare, Richard II
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From another poet:
"ON a flat road runs the well-train’d runner;
He is lean and sinewy, with muscular legs;
He is thinly clothed - he leans forward as he runs,
With lightly closed fists, and arms partially rais’d."
- Walt Whitman
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From the Bible:
"But those who wait on the Lord Shall renew their strength;
They shall mount up with wings like eagles,
They shall run and not be weary,
They shall walk and not faint."
- Isaiah 40:31
"Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the
prize? So run, that ye may obtain. And every man that striveth for the
mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible
crown; but we an incorruptible. I therefore so run, not as uncertainly;
so fight I, not as one that beateth the air: But I keep under my body,
and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached
to others, I myself should be a castaway. "
- I Corinthians 9:24-27
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