GEORGE A. SHEEHAN

The mind's first step to self-awareness must be through the body.

Success means having the courage, the determination, and the will to become the person you believe you were meant to be.

If you want to win anything - a race, yourself, your life - you have to go a little berserk.

We may think there is willpower involved, but more likely... change is due to want power. Wanting the new addiction more than the old one. Wanting the new me in preference to the person I am now.

Happiness is different from pleasure. Happiness has something to do with struggling and enduring and accomplishing.

Exercise is done against one's wishes and maintained only because the alternative is worse.

Anything that changes your values changes your behavior.

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.

Sport is an essential element of education.

Every runner is an experiment of one.

If marathoners finish they win.

People begin running for any number of motives, but we stick to it for one basic reason-to find out who we really are.

The true runner is a very fortunate person. He has found something in him that is just perfect.

There are as many reasons for running as there are days in a year.... But mostly I run because I am an animal and a child.

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.

The difference between a jogger and a runner is an entry blank.

On the roads, I can see truth revealed whole without thought or reason. There I experience the sudden understanding that comes unasked, unbidden. I simply rest, rest within myself, rest within the pure rhythm of my running. And I wait.

Some think guts is sprinting at the end of a race. But guts is what got you there to begin with. Guts start back in the hills with 6 miles to go and you're thinking of how you can get out of this race without anyone noticing. Guts begin when you still have forty minutes of torture left and you're already hurting more than you ever remember.

Have you ever felt worse after a run?

There is no substitute for learning to live in our bodies.

There is nothing more certain than the defeat of the man who gives up.

Do not tell me what to do, tell me what you do. Do not tell me what is good for me, tell me what is good for you. If, at the same time, you reveal the you in me, if you become a mirror to my inner self, then you have made a reader and a friend.

The desire to run comes from deep within us — from the unconscious, the intuitive, the instinctive. And that desire becomes a passion when the runner learns to race. Then, the race becomes all — the lovemaking of the runner.

Like everyone else, I want to be challenged. I want to find out whether or not I am a coward. I want to see how much effort I can put out . . . what I can endure . . . if I measure up. Running allows that.

There are those of us who are always about to live. We are waiting until things change, until there is more time, until we are less tired, until we get a promotion, until we settle down / until, until, until. It always seems as if there is some major event that must occur in our lives before we begin living.