Endurance Sports Quotes

Humans are built for endurance, not speed. We're awful sprinters compared to every other animal. We try to run our races as if they were speed races, but they are not. They're endurance races. Even a marathon, the way it's run now, it's not an endurance contest.

When I was around thirty, I met my own personal challenge and finished a few marathons under three hours, and I have completed many long bicycle tours.

Before I became a fighter pilot, everyone said that women didn't have the physical strength. Well, I had just completed the Hawaii Ironman Triathlon.

Physical pain is my friend. I pursue it every night for four hours.

It's a question of spreading the available energy, aerobic and anaerobic, evenly over four minutes. If you run one part too fast, you pay a price. If you run another part more slowly your overall time is slower.

I am a fitness freak, and I do not celebrate any festivity in a grand way during the months of December and January because I am busy preparing for my marathon.

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.

For previous generations, swimming the English Channel was the feat to accomplish. And that's been done.

What makes a great endurance athlete is the ability to absorb potenial embarrassment, and to suffer without complaint. I was discovering that if it was a matter of gritting my teeth, not caring how it looked, and outlasting everybody else, I won. It didn't seem to matter what sport it was-in a straight-ahead, long-distant race, I could beat anybody. If it was a suffer-fest, I was good at it.

Truth is, a triathlete won the Tour de France seven times.

I'm away about six months of the year, competing here in the U.K. or in training camps in Arizona, Ethiopia, the Pyrenees.

I'm a naturally very competitive person and I've been competing in triathlons throughout 2012 to keep fit and keep my mind sharp.

I've been running like this since I was seven.

I ran a marathon, completed a mud run and jumped from a plane.

Going for a really long run, a bike ride, or cross-country skiing helps me get away from all the noise. I tell myself, 'The pain you're feeling, just enjoy it because it's going to help you across that finish line first.' If you're having a crap day, go for a run. It makes a big difference.

I'm very keen on outdoor things, lots of running and cycling.

I love cycling. I am going to keep racing as hard as I can until this body doesn't allow me to any more.

Cycling is so hard, the suffering is so intense, that it’s absolutely cleansing. The pain is so deep and strong that a curtain descends over your brain….Once; someone asked me what pleasure I took in riding for so long. ‘PLEASURE???? I said.’ ‘I don’t understand the question.’ I didn’t do it for the pleasure; I did it for the pain.

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

With the Special Ops Warrior Foundation's help, we put 266 kids through college last year. And that's what keeps me going. I'll be honest, I don't like running. I don't like biking. I don't like swimming. I do it to raise money. But, now that I'm in this sport, I want to see how far I can push myself. What makes me tick is that pain you feel when you do these ultramarathons. I love knowing that everyone's suffering because I know I can suffer just a little bit more. I can take a lot of pain.

I have been dreaming of an outdoor world record forever. Now I want them all: the 1500, the 5000, even the 800.

Swimming is probably the ultimate of burnout sports. It's ironic because millions of people who swim as their regular exercise love the meditation aspect of it; you don't wind up with any orthopedic injuries. But when you swim at a world class level for hours and hours - the loneness of the long distance runner.

I knew I wanted to be a professional triathlete, but I didn't know it was possible until I won the junior champs. My dad said I should give Cambridge a go to see if I could do both, but it was only ever a trial.

I'm somewhat of a masochist at heart. I like to sweat. I come from a very competitive sporting background - my dad was a world-champion surfer - so it's always been a part of my DNA. I do a lot of soft-sand running, hiking, yoga, and boxing, and I compete in triathlons.

I've been an exercise maniac most of my adult life, running marathons and triathlons, doing that as a regular way of life. I ran eight miles a day, every day for 29 years.