Born to Run

by Christopher McDougall

I didn’t love running, but I wanted to.

Fisher loved the sound of his own horn, no doubt about it, and that spurred him to keep finding reasons to toot it.

“There is not, and never was, a greater man than Emil Zatopek.”

“Think Easy, Light, Smooth, and Fast. You start with easy, because if that’s all you get, that’s not so bad. Then work on light. Make it effortless, like you don’t give a shit how high the hill is or how far you’ve got to go. When you’ve practiced that so long that you forget you’re practicing, you work on making it smooooooth. You won’t have to worry about the last one—you get those three, and you’ll be fast.”

“Beyond the very extreme of fatigue and distress, we may find amounts of ease and power we never dreamed ourselves to own; sources of strength never taxed at all because we never push through the obstruction.”

it was the closest a human could come to flying. I’d gotten just a taste of it out there on the trails of Creel, and I wanted more; it was like flapping your arms really hard and lifting a half inch off the ground—after that, how could you think of anything except trying again?

“There is no other feeling like that. / you will be alone with the gods / and the nights will flame with fire… . you will ride life straight to / perfect laughter, it’s / the only good fight there is.”

there was never anything wrong with Jenni that couldn’t be fixed by what’s right with Jenni.

If you don’t have answers to your problems after a four-hour run, you ain’t getting them.