A Quote by Robert M. Sapolsky

Most people who do a lot of exercise, particularly in the form of competitive athletics, have unneurotic, extraverted, optimistic personalities to begin with. (Marathon runners are exceptions to this.)
Just as an informal, nonscientific observation, most people's personalities don't seem to change very much during their lives. There are exceptions in the case of people who go through hugely traumatic events or suffer from brain injury or disease. Some would argue that religious conversions can have deep personality-altering effects. But these are all exceptions to the rule.
One thing people underestimate is how markets don't allow anyone to do anything except make better and better products. There's not much leeway. The world is a lot more competitive than most people think, particularly in a high-technology area. If a company takes its eye off improving its products, if it tries to do anything that would be viewed as an exercise of power, it'll be displaced very rapidly.
I know a lot of marathon runners who are at their best when they are close to 40. You say to yourself, 'It's 42 kilometres and they are 37 or 38 years old,' but the body can. What you have to make sure you don't lose is your head. That is the most important thing.
Have you seen a marathon race? Some runners will be leading right from the first - but after the halfway mark, it is the runners at the back who take over while the early leaders fade out.
The Marathon distance is very difficult to cover and without the support of all of the fans and people cheering us on and the other runners, we would have a very difficult time to run the full race. So we work together to make a marathon happen.
Winning times in the New York City Marathon have not dropped all that much over the years, but rather U.S. runners went backward. In 1983, there were 267 U.S. men who broke 2:20 in a marathon, and by 2000 that number was down to 27.
A lot of marathon runners access flow state. That's why it's so addictive: because they just get into this state where they're just completely one - they are in complete oneness. That's what happens to me when I play music and, I suppose, a lot of other people, too, which is why we do it.
Runners...you're competitive, but you want to have fun, too. You want to enjoy life. And runners really get to do that, I think-after we recover.
It's probably the toughest distance race in the world to win. World class runners from 1500m to the marathon contest it and instead of just three runners from each country, like in the Olympics or World Championships, in the senior men's race there are nine.
Runners exalt the marathon as a public test of private will, when months or years of solitary training, early mornings, lost weekends, rain and pain mature into triumph or surrender. That's one reason the race-day crowds matter, the friends who come to cheer and stomp and flap their signs and push the runners on.
The human race is the most stupid and unfair kind of race. A lot of the runners don't even get decent sneakers or clean drinking water. Some runners are born with a massive head start, every possible help along the way and still the referees seem to be on their side. It's not surprising a lot of people have given up compeating altogether and gone to sit in the grandstand, eat junk and shout abuse. What the human race needs is a lot more streakers.
Marathon runners set explicit goals.
We have sex like Kenyan marathon runners.
I think that's kind of nice that there's this kind of inherent respect between runners who do a marathon. People respect somebody who has done it, and I will do anything to get some respect because I don't get a lot respect in my life.
Do you like people? Most people claim that they like people with, of course, a "few exceptions." When the exceptions are added together it becomes clear that they include a vast majority of the people. It becomes equally clear that most people like just a few people, their kind of people, and either do not actively care for or actively dislike most of the "other" people.
Most major races, including the New York City Marathon, require runners to provide photo identification when picking up a bib. Most provide bibs only a few days before the race, shortening the window in which someone could copy a bib.
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