George A. Sheehan Quotes about Running

It's very hard in the beginning to understand that the whole idea is not to beat the other runners. Eventually you learn that the competition is against the little voice inside you that wants you to quit.

The real competition is against the little voice inside you that wants to quit

The answer to the big questions in running is the same as the answer to the big questions in life: Do the best with what you've got.

There are as many reasons for running as there are days in the year, years in my life. But mostly I run because I am an animal and a child, an artist and a saint. So, too, are you. Find your own play, your own self-renewing compulsion, and you will become the person you are meant to be.

Everyone is an athlete. The only difference is that some of us are in training, and some are not.

Running is just such a monastery- a retreat, a place to commune with God and yourself, a place for psychological and spiritual renewal.

The more I run, the more I want to run, and the more I live a life conditioned and influenced and fashioned by my running. And the more I run, the more certain I am that I am heading for my real goal: to become the person I am.

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.

Sweat cleanses from the inside. It comes from places a shower will never reach.

Once you have decided that winning isn't everything, you become a winner.

Life is a positive-sum game. Everyone from the gold medallist to the last finisher can rejoice in a personal victory.

Out on the roads there is fitness and self-discovery and the persons we were destined to be.

Listen to your body. Do not be a blind and deaf tenant.

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

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

To know you are one with what you are doing, to know that you are a complete athlete, begins with believing you are a runner.

For every runner who tours the world running marathons, there are thousands who run to hear leaves and listen to rain and look to the day when it all is suddenly as easy as a bird in flight.

I have found my hero and he is me.

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.

I run each day to preserve the self I attained the day before and to secure the self yet to be.

The obsession with running is really an obsession with the potential for more and more life.

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.

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

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