The Incomplete Book of Running

by Peter Sagal

People run from their problems or toward some idealized solution.

This is because most people need a little waft of mortality to motivate them to run seriously,

Running preserved me, running distracted me, and running prepared me in ways I hadn’t anticipated for challenges I couldn’t have imagined.

It’s scientifically possible you could beat them, in exactly the same way it’s scientifically possible that all the atoms in your body could align perfectly with the gaps between the atoms in the wall in front of you and you could run right through it.

there is no better feeling than starting a marathon. It beats finishing one with a hammer.

First-time Boston marathoners go out too fast at the beginning, whooping and leaping in the excitement of starting the Greatest Race in the World, and then they get to the tough part and they realize that they were completely unprepared and stupid to even attempt it. It’s a lot like marriage.

I now believe, along with Sun Tzu, that the war is lost or won long before the day of battle. You train, mentally and physically, as best you can, and on the day of the race you cast yourself upon the road and see where your legs can take you. You run until somebody or something tells you to stop.

everyone gets excited for the first woman, who is often met by cries of “First woman!” (Pro tip: she knows.)

Those who can’t play sports, run. Those who can’t run, run long.

Do not buy anything first. Jim Fixx was right: you have everything you need right now.

We have a tendency to purchase things with the expectation that they will improve us or cause us to become fitter, more active, but we believe this because we are the helpless objects of a multibillion-dollar, century-long campaign to convince us this is so, and partially because as a civilization we are only a few hundred years removed from believing that praying to the bones of saints would cure our arthritis.

Every first step is the same, every last step is different.

the run has become what it will be, different from every other run you’ll ever have or attempt, because every time you run you leave a little something on the road, and you pick up something to replace it.

Every step and every run is a transformation from what you were into what you are becoming: a runner.

We are evolved to run. Or we were “intelligently designed” to run, if you’re stupid.

ideally, you should be the second-slowest person in your group.

Any running is good; but running just on the edge of your ability, after comfort and before crisis, is the best.

If I don’t leave my headphones behind when I run, I wouldn’t spend a single minute of my waking life free from input.

Our sport seems mindless only to people who never run long enough for any thought to form other than “When can I stop running?” But the only way to succeed as a long-distance runner is to do it mindfully, to be aware of the body and the world it is moving through.

the Constitution was and remains a communal agreement, an imaginary construct given weight and meaning by collective belief.

We live in a world of mutually assured hallucination.

That which we imagine to be immutable is not.

reality is democratically determined, and I only have one vote.

Health has a thousand ways of expressing itself, and the least important way is how much fat you can pinch between your fingers.

As writer Michael Pollan noted in 2009, the rise of cooking shows—or more aptly, food shows—coincided with a decline of home cooking.

To cook for yourself, rather than merely feed yourself, is to show yourself love, especially important when there is a sudden and marked lack of others willing to do that. To cook for others is not only a form of caring, it’s a form of connection. The transformation of raw ingredients into cuisine is often called alchemy, but the true alchemy is what happens to you, the people you cook for, and the relationship between all of you.

Sometimes running sucks.

We’re trying to persuade you to buy into a lifestyle, and the secret to sales is to let the customer discover the defects in your product on her own, once it’s too late.

Many, many people tell me that they tried running once and hated it. And I say, “Well, give it a little more time,” and then they do and come back and say, “Now I hate it for a longer period of time.”

And as for races, I ran them according to the rule laid out by a famous miler decades ago: “The perfect mile race is one in which you lose consciousness just on the other side of the finish line.”

The Egress will not be denied.

The problem with being a midlife-crisis runner is that once you start, you’re already in decline.

success in racing did not have to equal misery.

Winston Churchill actually did say, in his youth: “Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.”

Marathoners are like tuna salad: we go bad in the heat.

But if there’s one thing that I have gained from my running career, it’s not the strength or cardiovascular fitness to run ten or twenty-six miles at a time, but the patience and focus to stay in the mile I’m in.

What running has given me, most of all, is the practice of persistence.

There is sadness, and there is hate, and bitterness. There is regret and fear and doubt and there are the injuries done to us and there are the injuries we do to others. But the lesson and practice of running is, again, a faith in the possibility of positive change. That, if you run enough miles, with enough dedication and the right kind of mind-set, if you accept the limitations of what’s possible but refuse to accept the rutted path of what’s painless, if you keep at it, if you keep going, you can become what it was you were meant to be.