George A. Sheehan Running Quotations

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

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 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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

The desire to run comes from deep within us - from the unconscious, the instinctive, the intuitive.

I have met my hero, and he is me.

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.

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

The true runner is a very fortunate person. He has found something in him that is just perfect.

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

The most important thing I learned [from running] is that there is only one runner in this race, and that is me.

And while these pounds were being shed, while the physiological miracles were occurring with the heart and muscle and metabolism, psychological marvels were taking place as well. Just so, the world over, bodies, minds, and souls are constantly being born again, during miles on the road.

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

We who run...are different from those who merely study us. We are out there experiencing what they are trying to put into words.

Fitness is just a stage you pass through on the way to becoming a racer.

Running makes you an athlete in all areas of life...trained in the basics, prepared for whatever comes, ready to fill each hour and deal with the decisive moment.

There are as many reasons for running as there are days in a year.... But mostly I run because I am an animal and a child.

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.

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

Have you ever felt worse after a run?

On the roads, I can see truth revealed whole without thought or reason. There I experience the sudden understanding that comes unasked, unbidden. I simply rest, rest within myself, rest within the pure rhythm of my running. And I wait.

To make your life a work of art, you must have the material to work with. The race, any race, is just such an experience.

If marathoners finish they win.

The key then is to find your own mountain, otherwise you will be competing with people who are not even in your event, and running up against the 'shoulds' and 'oughts' of that world, and the inevitable frustration and depression and feelings of failure. A person can be complete or incomplete, but one thing is sure, he cannot be someone else.

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