Runner Quotes

“Hunter S. Thompson said: ‘Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow!” What a Ride!”
― Lizzy Hawker, Runner: The Memoir of an Accidental Ultra-Marathon Champion

“The turmoil of emotion that permeates my every day – the doubts, the fears, the hopes, the apprehensions, the joy – is held in suspension. There is a quiet within my movement. I think. But my thoughts are not my master. For the moment I am simply running. Identity and purpose are irrelevant. To be running is enough. Because if I am running then I am alive. And to be alive is everything.”
― Lizzy Hawker, Runner: The Memoir of an Accidental Ultra-Marathon Champion

“We all have one. It is that run. Its physical location may change as we move house, region, country, continent. But it is the run that is always with us. It is the run that we can trust ourselves to. It is the run that is waiting to enfold us back again after injury, absence or discouragement. It is where we go in the cool of the early morning, in the heat of the day, in the fading light of a setting sun. It is a place we go to in all seasons, observing and feeling the changes, until the rhythm of the earth becomes our own, a comforting reminder of the impermanence of all things. It is where we go to seek solace, to seek challenge. It is where we go when we need to push, to hold back. It is where we go when we need to find a fragile peace.”
― Lizzy Hawker, Runner: The Memoir of an Accidental Ultra-Marathon Champion

“Running has often been the tool that I use as a way to explore, to learn, to live. It takes me to a place of balance – physical, mental, emotional. Running or not is irrelevant. It is the finding something that lets us delve deeper into our own story that matters.”
― Lizzy Hawker, Runner: The Memoir of an Accidental Ultra-Marathon Champion

“Albert Mummery, that eminent alpinist, described being in the mountains in this way: ‘Above, in the clear air and searching sunlight, we are afoot with the quiet gods, and men can know each other and themselves for what they are.”
― Lizzy Hawker, Runner: The Memoir of an Accidental Ultra-Marathon Champion

“As Carl Sagan said: ‘We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers.’2 Racing and the training it demands force me to ask myself questions. To find the time, the discipline and the motivation to train I have to decide what among the myriad of obligations of daily life is most important to me. It cultivates self-awareness, I start to become more mindful.”
― Lizzy Hawker, Runner: The Memoir of an Accidental Ultra-Marathon Champion

“Everything that came before had to happen for us to be the person we are now. And the greatest moments of clarity come when we look back and we realise that it was all necessary and all beautiful.”
― Lizzy Hawker, Runner: The Memoir of an Accidental Ultra-Marathon Champion

“We either don’t run, or if we do then running has become an ‘exercise’, something that either we are told to do, or we tell ourselves to do. Something that is measured in terms of value and benefit, rather than being an expression of feeling.”
― Lizzy Hawker, Runner: The Memoir of an Accidental Ultra-Marathon Champion

“What is important is finding a way that lets us keep exploring, experiencing, searching, sharing, living – whatever it is that lets us be fully present in the moment with an innocent trust that the world is before us and full of infinite possibility.”
― Lizzy Hawker, Runner: The Memoir of an Accidental Ultra-Marathon Champion

“In a car you’re always in a compartment … You’re a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame. On a [motor] cycle the frame is gone. You’re completely in contact with it all. You’re in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming.’3”
― Lizzy Hawker, Runner: The Memoir of an Accidental Ultra-Marathon Champion

“I start to turn inwards, withdrawing my senses, blocking out all the external stimuli, blind to everything but the narrow stretch of road immediately ahead within my gaze. I focus on moving forwards, riding on the rhythm of my breath. The world and all of time has been distilled down into this one moment. Now. Nothing else exists. Nothing else matters. All that there ever was, and all that there ever will be, is embraced by this one moment and my struggle to keep moving through it. The focus is absolute. It dissociates me from the rest of my journey. I am locked deep within my effort, right there in my moment of struggle.”
― Lizzy Hawker, Runner: The Memoir of an Accidental Ultra-Marathon Champion

“The Buddhist doctrine of impermanence teaches that one of the truths about life is that nothing lasts. Everything will pass. Everything indeed has to. It is in the nature of things. We cannot fight against the tide of life. In running, and in life, we have to reach deep within ourselves to find an equanimity that allows us to flow through the good and the not so good.”
― Lizzy Hawker, Runner: The Memoir of an Accidental Ultra-Marathon Champion

“You do not need to seek freedom in a different land, for it exists with your own body, heart, mind and soul. B.K.S. Iyengar, Light on Life”
― Lizzy Hawker, Runner: The Memoir of an Accidental Ultra-Marathon Champion

“If I can harness my concentration and focus when I run then my challenge is to learn how to direct it to good effect in my daily life. Therein being the value in my daily run – apart from bringing me to physical health and a point of balance – it presents me with an opportunity to learn, to grow, to change in my every day.”
― Lizzy Hawker, Runner: The Memoir of an Accidental Ultra-Marathon Champion

“Racing can give me a focus. It can give a direction to and motivation for my daily run. There is, of course, a time for everything. And racing will only ever be a part of my running. But sometimes I need what it is a race can give me – something to absorb my effort, my attention – moments where I am forced to step outside what is comfortable, time after time after time. I’m forced to focus on what I am feeling, on what I am enduring in the here and now, whether that is keeping warm in the cold, keeping cool in the heat, eating, drinking and looking after myself. Despite my physical effort, sometimes during a race I experience the moment where I am resting in stillness; I’ve stopped doing and I’m focused instead on being. And that is when I feel free. But of course the race itself is the smallest part of the story. It is the journey that is important; the everyday, the day in, day out. Start and finish lines are just steps on that journey. The prize is not a position, or a time; instead the getting to know myself, the work and the training must be its own reward.”
― Lizzy Hawker, Runner: The Memoir of an Accidental Ultra-Marathon Champion

“Life in its entirety is contained in this moment, now. But sometimes we need to go to extremes to recognise that here and now is always with us. The biggest obstacle, of course, is the striving. As long as we look for it we don’t see. To feel the flow of life we have to be totally present in the now – it can only happen to us, we cannot force it.”
― Lizzy Hawker, Runner: The Memoir of an Accidental Ultra-Marathon Champion

“Stillness is what creates love. Movement is what creates life. To be still and still moving – this is everything. Do Hyun Choe”
― Lizzy Hawker, Runner: The Memoir of an Accidental Ultra-Marathon Champion

“I cannot worry about what I don’t know. It seems a pointless waste of energy,”
― Lizzy Hawker, Runner: The Memoir of an Accidental Ultra-Marathon Champion

“Have you ever been curious to know how someone can run such a long way? Have you ever wondered what must go through their mind and emotions, what they must think about and feel for all those hours? Whether you race or not, whether you run or not, you are”
― Lizzy Hawker, Runner: The Memoir of an Accidental Ultra-Marathon Champion