Christopher McDougall Quotes

I have a saying 'train, don't strain.' The Americans have the saying 'no pain, no gain' and that's why they have no distance running champions. They get down to the track with a stopwatch and flog their guts out thinking that it'll make them a champion, but they'll never make a champion that way.

I've been running a full marathon every year for more than 20 years, and my record is getting worse. Getting older, getting worse. It's natural.

I run year-round and then ramp up my training for a race a few months before.

Where the marathon starts is after 30 kilometers. That's where you feel pain everywhere in your body. The muscles are really aching, and only the most prepared and well-organized athlete is going to do well after that.

An athlete may run ten thousand miles in order to prepare for one hundred yards. Quantity gives experience.

I found I could also be good in cross country. I don't think my running style has anything to do with it. If you have speed and your body feels good, you can do any distance.

But yeah, Ann [Trason] insisted, running was romantic; and no, of course her friends didn't get it because they'd never broken through. For them, running was a miserable two miles motivated solely by size 6 jeans: get on the scale, get depressed, get your headphones on, and get it over with. But you can't muscle through a five-hour run that way; you have to relax into it, like easing your body into a hot bath, until it no longer resists the shock and begins to enjoy it.

Long distance running is particularly good training in perseverance.

We don't need to run 5-6 kms, even in a Test match.

When you know you can run forever on court, you're not worried that you can play three sets. I think this is really important for your confidence.

You imagine running 120 miles a week, week in, week out, for the past four or five years. It takes a little bit out of you.

It is not easy to participate in the 21 km. marathon. It takes a lot of energy, determination, and will power. It takes months to train to reach that mark with a proper diet chart.

In those one-off games, everyone can do those, but you put together a six, seven-game tournament, the strong survive. For me to still feel good from beginning to end, that's a testament to how I train and what I do.

A lot of the people I know, they don't train like that. They do a lot of quick stuff, just speed drills. But I run long distance. I've always been like that, though, even when I was in high school. That's just how I train myself.

I can run a long distance very slowly and I do a half marathon every year.

Part of my gift as a fighter is being a human punching bag.

The 200 m. is the event I want to get better at.

Everyone works so hard on their game and on their body. Most of the time, it comes down to who is more relaxed mentally; on the court while playing and off the court.

I take Energol to improve my wind and stamina.

As an athlete, you learn to keep pushing through the pain until the pain eventually becomes unbearable. Even then, you are told to continue.

I can train harder and put myself through more punishing efforts now than I used to do, having done the Tour de France, and come off the road now.

I like, at the end of the night, to be walking back to the locker room limping and sweating, spitting blood out of my mouth. I've been doing this for a long time, and it comes naturally.

My high threshold for pain will allow me to battle through pretty much anything if I find a way to run and slide.

The best form of endurance exercise is the performance of the event.

I love being physical. It makes me feel like I sickly love the pain of it.