The answer to the big questions in running is the same as the answer to the big questions in life: Do the best with what you've got.
George A. SheehanRead
Running makes you an athlete in all areas of life...trained in the basics, prepared for whatever comes, ready to fill each hour and deal with the decisive moment.
Interpretation
Running prepares you for life's challenges by building discipline and resilience.
This quote emphasizes how the discipline and mental toughness gained from running can extend beyond the activity itself, influencing all aspects of life. It suggests that the training involved in running equips an individual to face daily challenges with readiness and confidence, reinforcing a mindset of preparedness for various experiences and decisive moments.
In practice
During a motivational speech at a sports event.
The answer to the big questions in running is the same as the answer to the big questions in life: Do the best with what you've got.
The distance runner is mysteriously reconciling the separations of body and mind, of pain and pleasure, of the conscious and the unconscious. He is repairing the rent, and healing the wound in his divided self. He has found a way to make the ordinary extraordinary; the commonplace unique; the everyday eternal.
No matter how old I get, the race remains one of life's most rewarding experiences. My times become slower and slower, but the experience of the race is unchanged: each race a drama, each race a challenge, each race stretching me in one way or another, and each race telling me more about myself and others.
The more I run, the more I want to run, and the more I live a life conditioned and influenced and fashioned by my running. And the more I run, the more certain I am that I am heading for my real goal: to become the person I am.
The key then is to find your own mountain, otherwise you will be competing with people who are not even in your event, and running up against the 'shoulds' and 'oughts' of that world, and the inevitable frustration and depression and feelings of failure. A person can be complete or incomplete, but one thing is sure, he cannot be someone else.
If you don't have daily objectives, you qualify as a dreamer.
You never know what's going to happen. My mother was an English teacher. If someone had told her that I was going to write a book, she would never have believed that. So you can never say never.
I'm tough on myself in terms of the standards I want to live up to, but that's also part of my pleasure: Knowing you are being your fullest self. Being your fullest self is a lot of work.
It doesn't matter which side of the fence you get off on sometimes. What matters most is getting off. You cannot make progress without making decisions.
A champion is simply someone who did not give up when he wanted to.
My parents always used to tell us not to complain about things but do something about them, so 'Can't is not an option' was almost a way of life.
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