The Examined Run Quotes

“Running involves a lot of passing in and out of darkness. Racing is visible. People gather to watch and cheer, albeit not in the droves they come to watch football. But a lot of the sport is hidden from view. Runners run in the early mornings when people are sleeping, and many of their miles are solitary. They stretch and lift on their own initiative, and if they surge during a run, rather than ease off the gas, they are the only ones who will ever know that. Running is difficult, and runners encounter that difficulty daily and bodily. It is how runners manage themselves through that difficulty that determines the sort of character they develop over time.”
― Sabrina Little, The Examined Run: Why Good People Make Better Runners

“The reality of being human is that how we move our bodies, particularly in the habitual way we do as athletes, has a direct bearing on who we are as people. For example, every day I wake up and put my sneakers on. I run some predetermined distance from my training schedule, sometimes fast and other times less so. I watch some numbers grow smaller (pace and heart rate) and some numbers grow bigger (mileage and aerobic capacity). But it is not just my body that changes. It could not be just my body. This is because I am not a physical shell—like a chocolate bunny with an unincorporated ghost floating inside. I am both fully embodied and fully an agent, and what I do with my body impacts who I am. Running provides an occasion by which my body is submitted to disciplines, and this changes the way I am inclined to think, act, and feel.”
― Sabrina Little, The Examined Run: Why Good People Make Better Runners

“fitness is feeling like you are dying at a much faster pace than you used to feel like you were dying at.”
― Sabrina Little, The Examined Run: Why Good People Make Better Runners

“Runners often discuss “knowing their why.” It means making sure that the motivations sustaining your training and racing are good, solid ones.”
― Sabrina Little, The Examined Run: Why Good People Make Better Runners

“Athletics is a great avenue for character education because it teaches us something important about becoming a virtuous person—the embodied reality that “practicing the virtues” is difficult.”
― Sabrina Little, The Examined Run: Why Good People Make Better Runners

“But it is not repeatedly “doing hard things” that develops a good character; it is practicing being a certain type of person and acting from the right motivation during those hard things that helps us to cultivate virtue.”
― Sabrina Little, The Examined Run: Why Good People Make Better Runners

“what I do with my body impacts who I am. Running provides an occasion by which my body is submitted to disciplines, and this changes the way I am inclined to think, act, and feel.”
― Sabrina Little, The Examined Run: Why Good People Make Better Runners