I spent the first twenty years of my running career trying to run as many miles as I could as fast as I could. Then I spent the next twenty years trying to figure out how to run the least amount of miles needed to finish a marathon. And I've come to the conclusion the second way is much more enjoyable.
If you run, you are a runner. It doesn't matter how fast or how far. It doesn't matter if today is your first day or if you've been running for twenty years. There is no test to pass, no license to earn, no membership card to get. You just run.
I discovered years ago that the best results in this respect could be gained by running 100 miles weekly at my near best aerobic efforts and that, supplementary to this, running as many easy miles as I could
The way to get through anything mentally painful is to take it a little at a time. The mind can't handle dealing with a massive iceberg of pain in front of it, but it can deal with short nuggets that will come to an end. So instead of thinking, Ugh, I've got twenty-four miles to go, focus on making it to the next telephone pole in the distance. Whether you're running twenty or one hundred and twenty miles at a time, the distance has to be tackled mentally and physically one mile at a time. The ability to compartmentalize pain into these small bite sizes is key.
I started running, and I hated it. Of course, everyone hates running for the first mile. If you're running two miles or twenty miles, it always hurts. Now I live it. I look forward to it. It's really good. It clears my head.
Running is not, as it so often seems, only about what you did in your last race or about how many miles you ran last week. It is, in a much more important way, about community, about appreciating all the miles run by other runners, too.
When I was about twenty-five years of age, Professor Sims informed me that I could sing, but added, 'I would like to be at least forty miles away while you are doing it.'
The minimum I run each day is 2 1/2 miles. I'll get to the weekend, and sometimes I'll run 10 miles. I've gotten up to 16 miles on the weekend. Running keeps me locked in.
I've run a lot of miles over the years, some fast and some not so fast. I've won some big races and I've had some big disappointments, but I enjoy the freedom of running and the challenge of training and competition as much now as when I first started back in high school.
I spent the first years working in Jordan trying to learn as much as I could about what was taking place in the country, about where there were gaps in the development process that needed attention.
He wanted to impart some of the truths Bruce Denton had taught him, that you dont' become a runner by winning a morning workout. The only true way is to marshal the ferocity of your ambition over the course of many days, weeks, months, and (if you could finally come to accept it) years. The Trial of Miles; Miles of Trials. How could he make them understand?
As an actor who has spent twenty years trying to crack America, the day I reached the 'Bloodline' set and found my name on a chair next to Sissy Spacek's was the happiest of my working life.
Nothing changed in my life since I work all the time," Pamuk said then. "I've spent 30 years writing fiction. For the first 10 years I worried about money and no one asked me how much money I made. The second decade I spent money and no one was asking me about that. And I've spent the last 10 years with everyone expecting to hear how I spend the money, which I will not do.
You can't rush the miles. No matter how fast I run, the five miles isn't going to be done in the first five minutes.
I do a lot of biking. I need that mileage and the long-distance stuff because tennis demands it. My fitness trainer is always trying to convince me to do an Ironman. I can probably run the marathon, I can make the 112 miles on the bike, but I will never swim for 2.4 miles. I will die after 100 meters.
I think I was just trying to coast and you can't coast and try and win at the same time, you know? It'll be three years now since those wins, but the last couple of years I've just really been trying to put my miles in, get them up there to 80 miles a week, 90 miles a week and put the work in again.
I spent the first twenty years of my writing career preparing for the mystery genre, which is my favorite literary form.