Gerry Lindgren Quotes

Run with your heart instead of your mind. When you think with your mind, you think of the things you can and can't do. But when you run with your heart you forget about what you can't do, and you just go out and do it.

Wanting to win races is detrimental to courage. You tend to run too conservatively because you want to wait and sprint. If you are there to force the pace, to CREATE greatness rather than to have greatness, Courageous moves are a part of your race.

When I first came into international running, most runners did about 60-70 miles or running a week. I guess that is still the standard except for Kenya and Ethiopia. I was doing 150-250 a week and some weeks as high as 350. It was unheard of! But, because I did not have access to what was possible and standard, I had to set my own possibilities and standards. I was just lucky enough to be out of the loop and not know.

Set a new standard. Change reality. Break ground to something new and different. That achievement will live forever just because you WERE somebody special!

My key to victory was that I always went out way too fast. Too fast erases every other race strategy out there. Everyone is hanging on for dear life or they give up.

COURAGE is not a quality you teach. Courage is the by-product of self-discipline. It is an ATTITUDE.

Kids are afraid that if they race too fast they will get tired. Way too much fear and way too little COURAGE.

I just wanted to quit running. My coach, Tracy Walters, took me aside and told me that I had an opportunity few people ever get. He said that I could inspire the whole team because I was so small and unathletic.

Goals should be impossible! You should tread FEARLESSLY where the brave dare not go.

The only thing that lives beyond the grave is the wake you have created by the way you have lived your life; the goals you have set; the distance away from the normal you dared to tread.

Humans are a TOUGH animal! We can do anything.

The hard part is believing it can happen to you. Most likely, my runners will never achieve a 3-minute mile. I think they may all be disappointed at 3:20 or 3:30. But even if they never break 4-minutes they will have accomplished something DYNAMIC! They will have created the possibility than now does not exist.

Speedwork is terribly overrated! I remember talking to runners after distance races and someone is sure to say they were able to run fast off base work with no speed work at all. The truth is speedwork doesn't work. Lots of miles, and then fast miles gets you there much quicker than speed work.

Everyone dies whether one is good in their lifetime or evil in their lifetime. So virtue has no payback. Life is meaningless. When you die, you die!

Based on my experience; I would develop fast speed before anything else. Get your young runners so they can run and teach them speed.

There are champions in every neighborhood. Anyone can run to the very top. ANYONE! But you have to (a) start right, (b) think right, and (c) believe. Most runners get lost in one or more of those three steps.

I would instill in my team an attitude of role modeling. We run to teach other people the value of physical activity. In all things, be humble and appreciative; hurt no one; help anyone you can.

We didn't keep track of how many miles we ran back then. We just ran. If you LOVE to run with the kind of passion I have for running, you will understand this. Running was my mode of transportation.

The FEAR of becoming dehydrated causes dehydration. As with so many things in our life, it is because we KNOW it is a problem that it is a problem.

The 3-minute mile goal is to teach runners that the impossible is where goals should be set.

This life is made to change all reality. We are here for the benefit, happiness, and welfare of a new reality; a new direction.

If you KNOW dehydration is a problem in long runs it becomes a problem in long runs.

I never did cross training or lifted weights or put anything between myself and my passion for running.

I got into running because I was too uncoordinated to play baseball, too small for basketball, and too tiny for football. I lived in a broken home and had looked to those sports as a way of staying away from my home.

The best runners every year are those who race out way too fast.