Duel in the Sun Quotes

“Running isn’t simply a discipline,” he said. “It can become a compulsion—it can become like a god. If you worship this god, you forget everything else. And when you lose this god, you’ve got nothing.”
― John Brant, Duel in the Sun: Alberto Salazar, Dick Beardsley, and America's Greatest Marathon

“Miami, published in 1987.”
― John Brant, Duel in the Sun: Alberto Salazar, Dick Beardsley, and America's Greatest Marathon

“Indeed, the zeal of Boston's rank-and-file marathoners rivaled, and in some ways echoed, the religious passion of Nathaniel Howe and his congregation. The runners indulged in orgies of self-denial-running 100 miles a week, working junk )ohs in order to have time to train, paying their own way to races, banding together in ascetic cells, forgoing the temptations of an idolatrous world in order to attain grace and salvation out on the road. As in Puritan New England, grace was not blithely attained. A believer-a runner-earned it by losing toenails and training down to bone and muscle, just as the Puritans formed calluses on their knees from
praying. No one made a cent from their strenuous efforts. The running life, like the spiritual life, was its own reward.”
― John Brant, Duel in the Sun: Alberto Salazar, Dick Beardsley, and America's Greatest Marathon