Marathon Game Quotes

I saw many people who begun their marathon races lately, but they eventually came up as top winners. I believe that your "lateness" does not account for your "lastness". It's not too late for you to make a start... Begin it now! No further delays!

In the long run, completing a marathon makes us happier than eating a chocolate cake. Raising a child makes us happier than beating a video game. Starting a small business with friends while struggling to make ends meet makes us happier than buying a new computer. These activities are stressful, arduous, and often unpleasant. They also require withstanding problem after problem. Yet they are some of the most meaningful moments and joyous things we’ll ever do. They involve pain, struggle, even anger and despair—yet once they’re accomplished, we look back and get all misty-eyed telling our grandkids about them.

Geeks are not the world’s rowdiest people. We’re quiet and introspective, and usually more comfortable communing with our keyboards or a good book than each other. Our idea of how to paint the Emerald City red involves light liquor, heavy munchies, and marathon sessions of video games of the ‘giant robots shooting each other and everything else in sight’ variety. We debate competing lines of software or gaming consoles with passion, and dissect every movie, television show, and novel in the science fiction, fantasy, and horror genres. With as many of us as there are in this town, people inevitably find ways to cater to us when we get in the mood to spend our hard-earned dollars. Downtown Seattle boasts grandiose geek magnets, like the Experience Music Project and the Experience Science Fiction museum, but it has much humbler and far more obscure attractions too, like the place we all went to for our ship party that evening: a hole-in-the-wall bar called the Electric Penguin on Capitol Hill.

I don't know that you'll understand this, but once upon a time, long ago, I was a scholar and a marathon man, but that fella's gone now, dead I suppose, but I remember something he thought, which was that if you don't learn the mistakes of the past, you'll be doomed to repeat them. Well we've been making a mistake with people like you, because public trials are bullshit and executions are games for winners - all this time we should have been giving back pain. That's the real lesson. That's the loser's share, just pain, pure and simple, pain and torture, no hotshot lawyers running around trying to see that justice is done. I think we'd have a nice peaceful place here if all you warmakers knew you better not start something because if you lost, agony was just around the bend. That's what I'd like to give you. Agony. Not what you're suffering now. I mean a lifetime of it, 'cause that's the only degree of justice I think we're ready for down here yet, and I know any humanist might disagree with me too, but I don't think you will, because you had a lot to do with educating me, I'm like you now, except I'm better at it, because you're going to die and I've still got a long way to go.

His tongue swept in, gentle and sweet, but also intense. She tasted spearmint, like he’d been chewing gum. He smelled like grass from the field. One hand smoothed a path up her back under her sweatshirt but over her tank. His palm made lazy circles on her back that mimicked the rhythm of their kiss. It was a light, almost reverent touch, and she finally knew what Katie meant when she had once said she loved kissing so much she could do it for hours alone. If this was how it was supposed to be done, sign her up for a marathon event.

The race of life is a marathon, not a sprint.

It's all fun and games until you have a bad sports bra that causes your boobs to chafe.

How to describe the things we see onscreen, experiences we have that are not ours? After so many hours (days, weeks, years) of watching TV—the morning talk shows, the daily soaps, the nightly news and then into prime time (The Bachelor, Game of Thrones, The Voice)—after a decade of studying the viral videos of late-night hosts and Funny or Die clips emailed by friends, how are we to tell the difference between them, if the experience of watching them is the same? To watch the Twin Towers fall and on the same device in the same room then watch a marathon of Everybody Loves Raymond. To Netflix an episode of The Care Bears with your children, and then later that night (after the kids are in bed) search for amateur couples who’ve filmed themselves breaking the laws of several states. To videoconference from your work computer with Jan and Michael from the Akron office (about the new time-sheet protocols), then click (against your better instincts) on an embedded link to a jihadi beheading video. How do we separate these things in our brains when the experience of watching them—sitting or standing before the screen, perhaps eating a bowl of cereal, either alone or with others, but, in any case, always with part of us still rooted in our own daily slog (distracted by deadlines, trying to decide what to wear on a date later)—is the same? Watching, by definition, is different from doing.

championships, and went on to break the U.S. record in distances from three miles to the marathon. At the 2004 Athens Games, Deena outlasted the world-record holder, Paula Radcliffe, to win the bronze, the first Olympic medal

In the long run, completing a marathon makes us happier than eating a chocolate cake. Raising a child makes us happier than beating a video game. Starting a small business with friends while struggling to make ends meet makes us happier than buying a new computer. These activities are stressful, arduous, and often unpleasant. They also require withstanding problem after problem. Yet they are some of the most meaningful moments and joyous things we’ll ever do

Mentally practice two or three times each week for about 10 to 15 minutes per rehearsal. Select a specific sports skill to further develop, or work your way though different scenarios, incorporating various game-ending situations. Examples include meeting your marathon goal time, striking out the side in the bottom of the ninth, or making the game-winning shot as the final buzzer is sounding. Mental practice sessions that are shorter in length are also beneficial. Good times include during any downtime in your schedule, the night before a competition, as an element of your pregame routine, and especially as part of a preshot routine.

I was among those encouraged to visit China to witness the emergence of “democratic” elections in a village near the industrial town of Dongguan. While visiting, I had a chance to talk in Mandarin with the candidates and see how the elections actually worked. The unwritten rules of the game soon became clear: the candidates were allowed no public assemblies, no television ads, and no campaign posters. They were not allowed to criticize any policy implemented by the Communist Party, nor were they free to criticize their opponents on any issue.

These two sorts of chosen pain and suffering—for pleasure and for meaning—differ in many ways. The discomfort of hot baths and BDSM and spicy curries is actively pursued; we look forward to it—the activity wouldn’t be complete without it. The other form of suffering isn’t quite like that. When training for a marathon, nobody courts injury and disappointment. And yet the possibility of failure has to exist. When you start a game, you don’t want to lose, but if you know you will win every time, you’re never going to have any fun. So, too, with life more generally.

When you're making whoopee, it's most like which Olympic sport: marathon running, gymnastics or ice hockey?' When Cam came home from the station, she'd asked him what he thought. 'Hockey,' he had said without hesitation. And he was right – there was a fury to their lovemaking, as if they were punishing each other for being something different from what they each had hoped. Many nights after that game show she had lain awake, listening to the tide of Cam's breathing, wondering why one of the multiple choices hadn't been something slow and lovely, like pairs' skating or water ballet, something partnered in grace and beauty and trust.

It’s like finding Jesus.” “It’s like finding out the things you believed in as a child are actually real.” “It’s like eating the mushrooms in Super Mario.” “It’s like recovering from dysentery.” “It’s like Christmas morning.” “It’s like all eight nights of Hanukkah.” “It’s like having an orgasm.” “It’s like having multiple orgasms.” “It’s like watching a great movie.” “Reading a great book.” “Playing a great game.” “It’s like finishing debugging on your own game.” “It’s the taste of youth itself.” “It’s feeling well after a long sickness.” “It’s running a marathon.” “I’ll probably never have to do a single other thing in my life, because I tasted this peach.

The Neanderthals had it tougher; their long spears and canyon ambushes were useless against the fleet prairie creatures, and the big game they preferred was retreating deeper into the dwindling forests. Well, why didn’t they just adopt the hunting strategy of the Running Men? They were smart and certainly strong enough, but that was the problem; they were too strong. Once temperatures climb above 90 degrees Fahrenheit, a few extra pounds of body weight make a huge difference—so much so that to maintain heat balance, a 160-pound runner would lose nearly three minutes per mile in a marathon against a one hundred-pound runner. In a two-hour pursuit of a deer, the Running Men would leave the Neanderthal competition more than ten miles behind. Smothered in muscle, the Neanderthals followed the mastodons into the dying forest, and oblivion. The new world was made for runners, and running just wasn’t their thing. Privately,

How is it, then, that Infinite Jest still feels so transcendently, electrically alive? Theory one: as a novel about an “entertainment” weaponized to enslave and destroy all who look upon it, Infinite Jest is the first great Internet novel. Yes, William Gibson and Neal Stephenson may have gotten there first with Neuromancer and Snow Crash, whose Matrix and Metaverse, respectively, more accurately surmised what the Internet would look and feel like. (Wallace, among other things, failed to anticipate the break from cartridge- and disc-based entertainment.) But Infinite Jest warned against the insidious virality of popular entertainment long before anyone but the most Delphic philosophers of technology. Sharing videos, binge-watching Netflix, the resultant neuro-pudding at the end of an epic gaming marathon, the perverse seduction of recording and devouring our most ordinary human thoughts on Facebook and Instagram—Wallace somehow knew all this was coming, and it gave him (as the man himself might have put it) the howling fantods.

Wait a second,” said Ash. “How is there a ‘moon in springtime before the start of the new year’? I think it’s a riddle. It makes no sense.” “Yes, it does,” said Jared. “The new year was in March in England until the 1700s, when the pope introduced a new calendar.” Everyone stared at him. Jared flushed slightly, scar thrown into relief, and muttered, “I read a lot of old books.” “Well done,” said Jon. “See where learning gets you, lads? So much better than messing around with girls or playing those video games which one hears are full of violence.” Kami, as a witness to many of her father’s video game marathons, gave him a long judgmental stare. “You total hypocrite.” “Hypocrisy is what being a parent is all about,” Jon said. “Well done for cracking the books, Jared and Holly. You see how it pays off.” Holly smiled and the light of her smile seemed to spill all over the room, reflections of light refracted all over everywhere. “It’s true reading is a wonderful thing,” Rusty observed. “I read a Cosmo a year ago, and I still remember how to keep my nails in perfect condition and also ten top tips on how to dress to accentuate my ass.” Now everybody was staring at Rusty. Unlike Jared, he did not blush. “Those tips are working,” he said. “Don’t pretend you haven’t all noticed. I know the truth.” Kami rolled up a magazine on the table—sadly, for the sake of dramatic irony, not a Cosmo—and hit Rusty over the head with it. “Does anybody have anything else to say—I can’t stress this enough—specifically about Elinor Lynburn and medieval New Year?” “Want to know what it was called? You’ll like this,” Jared added, and he looked at Kami. It was a simple glance from his gray eyes, but it felt like being put in a room that was just the two of them. “Lady Day.” Kami beamed at him. “You know what I like, sugarprune

I am a boy mom, but I am raising two very different boys. So what does #lifewithboys mean in my house? Mud. Blood. ER visits and black eyes. “He threw a rock at me!” but also, “Let’s play a math game on the computer!” Holes in the knees of brand-new pants. Dirty cleats and stinky jock-straps. Marathon games of Monopoly, chess, and Sudoku. Reading Harry Potter five times. Yelling “No throwing baseballs in the house!” Science camp by day and soccer practice by night. Messy hair and dirty fingernails. Overdue library books. Tears. Fears. And love. We may have holes in the walls and holes in our pants, but I wouldn’t trade this life. It’s exhaustingly beautiful and never boring. Someday, my youngest child may have a boy just like him, and when he throws a baseball through the living room window, I’ll tell my son that it’s okay. He’s just a little boy.

Zoe put her hand up mechanically and mouthed the words along with the crowd, but no sound came out. She was beyond tired, exhausted from eighteen straight hours at the building site. And after this marathon rally, she still had to finish her self-criticism and hand it in to the Special Case Group by nine o’clock tomorrow morning. Since the campaign to combat and prevent revisionism started, the Party had been busy rooting out traitors and spies. Zoe was labeled a prime suspect, accused of spying for the Russians and Helen Huang stealing materials from the field, and discharged from her position at the Testing Control Center.

IS FATIGUE ALL IN YOUR HEAD? In the early 1990s, in a physiology lab at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, an exercise scientist named Tim Noakes, MD, unveiled a radical new way to think about fatigue. Until then, prevailing wisdom held that fatigue occurred in the body. At a certain intensity or duration of physical effort, the demands we put on our muscles become too great and, eventually, our muscles fail. Ask any athlete, from a marathon runner to a powerlifter, and they will be familiar with the feeling. It’s not a particularly comfortable one. What at first is a manageable burn becomes worse and worse until they can no longer bear it. The runner’s pace slows to a mere shuffle; the powerlifter can’t manage to hoist the barbell up for one last rep. Try as they might, they simply run out of gas and their muscles cease to contract. Noakes, however, wasn’t convinced that fatigue occurred in the body or that muscles actually ran out of gas. He questioned why so many athletes, seemingly overwhelmed by fatigue, were suddenly able to speed up during the final stretch of a race when the end was in sight. If the muscles were truly dead, Noakes hypothesized, these finish-line spurts would be impossible. To prove his point, Noakes attached electrical sensors to athletes and then instructed them to lift weights with their legs until they simply couldn’t lift any longer. (In exercise science, this is called “inducing muscle failure.”) When the weights slammed down and each participant tapped out, reporting they could no longer contract their muscles, Noakes ran an electrical current through the sensor. Much to the surprise of everyone—especially to the participants whose legs were dead—their muscles contracted. Although the participants could not contract their muscles on their own, Noakes proved that their muscles actually had more to give. The participants felt drained, but empirically, their muscles were not. Noakes repeated similar versions of this experiment and observed the same result. Although participants reported being totally depleted and unable to contract their muscles after exercising to what they thought was failure, when electrical stimulation was applied, without fail, their muscles produced additional force. This led Noakes to conclude that contrary to popular belief, physical fatigue occurs not in the body, but in the brain. It’s not that our muscles wear out; rather, it is our brain that shuts them down when they still have a few more percentage points to give. Noakes speculates this is an innately programmed way of protecting ourselves. Physiologically, we could push our bodies to true failure (i.e., injury and organ failure), but the brain comes in and creates a perception of failure before we actually harm ourselves. The brain, Noakes remarked, is our “central governor” of fatigue. It’s our “ego” shutting us down when confronted by fear and threat. In other words, we are hardwired to retreat when the going gets tough. But like Boyle and Strecher demonstrated, it is possible to override the central governor.

In the long run, completing a marathon makes us happier than eating a chocolate cake. Raising a child makes us happier than beating a video game. Starting a small business with friends while struggling to make ends meet makes us happier than buying a new computer.

Elephant wanted no part of Rupert Panther. Rather, he wanted Rupert Panther to have no part of him, which was a realistic concern because Rupert was looking at Elephant like a gambler coming off a marathon poker game in Las Vegas looks at the all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet, like he has something to settle with a tall stack of pancakes, and he's all business and all fork.

my own all day long. Just as all the other boys joined in the wheelbarrowing – a chaotic tangle of shrieks and skinny limbs – the mayhem came to a halt. Massimo strode down the garden, dressed in a proper goalkeeping outfit, clapping his hands and barking out an authoritative, ‘Right, gather round.’ I’d been trying to get their attention for the last half an hour. It was still a man’s world. But right now, I was glad this particular man with his child-taming abilities was here. He ran through the rules of the splash and score game involving transferring water from one dustbin to another before shooting at the goal. ‘Two teams, you’re the goalie for that one, Nico; I’ll be the other.’ Not for Massimo the ‘Ready, Steady, Go, let’s all enjoy ourselves’ approach. Oh no. He blew a whistle and launched into a stream of team encouragement that made me feel as though he was trying to cheer an Olympic marathon runner to the finish line rather than a gaggle

That legend—and it is more legend than historical fact—inspired a race in 1896 at the first modern Olympic Games over approximately the same route. Only 17 runners participated in that first race. In 2010, 20,000 runners appeared for the 2,500th anniversary celebration.

The next Friday, I went to visit my favorite Englishman for game night. Justus groaned when I bragged about our plans for an all-night Godzilla marathon, but I knew he was glad to be rid of me. He liked to go out and get his freak on, whether he’d admit it or not. Every man has needs, and his were never satisfied when I tagged along. Maybe I was a little mean to the women, but it irritated me that he didn’t have standards.

I think you should come over later this week. I’m feelin’ a need for some moonshine.” She raised a brow. “Ooh, what about a Supernatural marathon?” “We could make up a drinking game,” Daisy said. “How about we do a shot every time it looks like Castiel is going to kiss Dean?

You could say that learning opening theory is like trying to run a marathon before you can tie your own shoe properly.

In the long run, completing a marathon makes us happier than eating a chocolate cake. Raising a child makes us happier than beating a video game. Starting a small business with friends while struggling to make ends meet makes us happier than buying a new computer. These activities are stressful, arduous, and often unpleasant. They also require withstanding problem after problem. Yet they are some of the most meaningful moments and joyous things we’ll ever do.

I only do things that interest me, and never anything that doesn’t. My ultimate goal in life is to read books I like, listen to music I enjoy, play with my cats, drink some semi-decent red wine, and watch a live baseball game on TV. And run one full marathon a year and travel occasionally. I don’t shoot lions, don’t catch marlins. Living itself is adventure enough.

Many organs in our bodies make molecules and release them into our bloodstream as a way to talk with other organs. These endocrine organs include the pancreas, the pituitary gland, the ovaries, and the testes. But few had thought of muscle as an endocrine organ until Pedersen’s work. Interleukin-6 was just the start. Scientists have now discovered over a hundred molecules that our muscles make and release into the blood as we walk. Pedersen’s team discovered that one of these, oncostatin M, shrank breast tissue tumors in mice and could be yet another reason why exercise is beneficial to humans with breast cancer. In 2003, Pedersen coined a name for this amazing family of molecules: myokines. As a myokine, interleukin-6 is an anti-inflammatory. Among other roles, it helps shut down the problematic tumor necrosis factor (TNF). It is the body’s natural ibuprofen. Pedersen’s team also discovered that interleukin-6 can mobilize cells called “natural killers” to attack and destroy cancerous tumors, at least in mice. For some reason, this myokine needs to be produced by muscles during exercise in order to work. But that does not require walking. Can the 3 million Americans in wheelchairs generate myokines? Yes. Researchers at the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine at Wakayama Medical University in Japan have discovered elevated interleukin-6 levels, and lowered tumor necrosis factor, after wheelchair half-marathons and basketball games. As Juliette Rizzo, 2005 Ms. Wheelchair America, said, “Walking is a way to get from A to B, and I do that.” Myokines, however, are not magic potions. They cannot be injected or swallowed. They are made only when the body is in motion, and in modern societies it often is not.

So that girl you told us about at the will reading... She's real?" "Very real. Her name's Daisy. She's the sister of an old friend. She knows what it's all about and she's okay with it because the arrangements benefits her, too." "I thought she hated you." Joe leaned against the faded white picket fence that surrounded the visitor center. "I think we may have worked that out." He wasn't sure how Daisy felt about him, but after the other night, he was pretty sure hate wasn't at the top of her list. "Well, good for you. I won't say anything. As far as I'm concerned, you've known her forever." "I have known her forever, but we've gone on dates to make it seem more real." He pulled out his phone to show Joe the pictures of him and Daisy at the clothing store, the restaurant, the hockey game, and the one he'd taken when he'd declared her the winner of their Guitar Hero marathon. Joe gave him a quizzical look. "You sure it's fake? Looks like you two are having fun." Liam stared at the picture they'd taken at the hockey game. She'd kissed him, not the other way around. And it hadn't been for show. He'd seen something in her face---something soft and raw and real. And then, just when he'd thought it was all over, when his past had come back to haunt him, she'd shown him just how strong she really was, and made him want her even more.

The Illusion of Choice” — A lot of times we feel as if we have choices to make about where we want to go and WHAT IT TAKES to get there. — The REALITY is that what it takes to succeed is not REALLY a choice. — WE GET tired of talking about it. — I get tired of talking about it. — I know we all do—but we are going to talk about it until we RESOLVE it. — ANYONE who runs a marathon will tell you that miles twenty to twenty-six are the hardest. — AND ANYONE who quits running at mile twenty-two will tell you that they immediately felt better—and IT’S TRUE. But days later when they read about the people who finished ahead of them—who kept running—they will have instant regret. — MY point is that THE ONLY CHOICE YOU HAD was to come to this school. — ONCE you chose that, you said, “I’M GOING TO BE ELITE.” — If that’s true, then the FORMULA is the FORMULA. — YEARS from now when they look back at this ALABAMA team, all that WILL BE LEFT is WHAT WE DID. — NOT what WE COULD HAVE DONE, if only this or this happened. — IF we are ELITE—IF we are a team who BELIEVES BIG—then WE DON’T have a “choice” about how we finish this SPRING. — NONE. — THIS game rewards people who DO IT RIGHT. — THIS game has demands—YOU DO them and succeed or YOU DON’T do them and you struggle. THERE is no middle area. — MY point is we don’t “have a choice” about how we are going to do things if we are going to STAY TRUE to the goals WE ALL made to start this year.

Anyway, I pushed past Dirk the Jerk, and rushed toward the library. I needed to find an ultimate Minecraft guide with tips and tricks, shortcuts and secrets. My plan was simple. I’d buy the game, study the book, and start playing. It couldn’t be that hard, right? I was determined to beat Dirk the Jerk at something, even if it killed me!   I headed to the library’s computer books section.  I quickly scanned for game guides. They had books on popular games such as Candy Crusher, Angry Birdbrains, and Minion Marathon. But none about Minecraft?   Then, I spotted a thin book crammed way at the back of the shelf. It was covered with a thick layer of dust and spiderwebs. (Yuck! I hate spiders!) I yanked it out: Minecraft: Surviving the First Night: An Insider’s Guide.   It was more like a journal. Not exactly what I was looking for but it was better than nothing. I looked closer at the book and noticed that there wasn’t a library sticker on it. The best I could figure was that it must be someone’s personal copy. Maybe he was hiding it from his mom who didn’t approve of computer games. (I knew all about that.)   At that point, I was really desperate. And since there wasn’t any way for me to check it out, I decided to take it. I was sure the owner wouldn’t miss it because it hadn’t been touched in forever. Maybe he’d forgotten all about it. And anyway, I’d return it after I crushed Dirk the Jerk in the survival challenge.   When I got home, I was faced with the hardest part of my whole plan, convincing Mom to buy Minecraft. She thinks computer and video games are a waste of time, except for educational ones. (She grew up back when Pac Man was hi-tech.)   I knew I’d need help coming up with reasons to convince Mom. So I checked with my good friend, Google, and I found a ton of information on why Minecraft was considered educational.     Once I explained to Mom that Minecraft taught everything from spatial relationships to electrical circuitry to complex machines, she caved in, and bought it. Now that the hard part was over, all I needed to do was learn the game.   I sat down in front of the computer in my room, and launched the game. I opened the Minecraft journal, and there was a bright flash of light!   That’s the last thing I remember.   The next thing I knew, I was sitting in the middle of a strange library. It took me a minute to figure out what the heck was going on. I looked around. Everything was made of blocks.   I looked down at my arms... rectangles. I looked down at my legs... Rectangles! I looked down at my body... a RECTANGLE!   Then it hit me... I was literally a blockhead IN Minecraft! *gulp*     That’s when I flipped out a little bit. For about ten minutes straight. I probably would have freaked out for longer, but it’s exhausting screaming, flapping my arms, and running in circles on stumpy little legs.   After I calmed down a bit and caught my breath, I thought of

Dirk the Jerk had a new computer game called Minecraft. He was bragging about how he was a master of Minecraft. I didn’t really understand what he was saying, but I think it was something about: - fighting the big, black Underwear Men (Seriously?) - defeating ghosts in the Netherlands - being super close to conquering the Slender Dragon (I wonder, how tough could a skinny dragon really be?)   After a while, I just wanted him to shut up! He went on and on and on until I just snapped!   “Yeah? Well, I finished the game on the fourth of July, loser!” I yelled.  I swear the word LOSER echoed throughout the school.   Loser! Loser! Loser!   Eyes bulged and mouths hung open all around us. Tension filled the hallway. Nobody talked to Dirk the Jerk that way. NOBODY. Unfortunately, that didn’t shut him up. He smirked, and challenged me to a Minecraft survival marathon on a popular server this weekend. Of course, I immediately accepted.

We waited what seemed like forever in the emergency room, but I was eventually admitted. The news was not good. X-rays showed a break; plus, I’d torn all three ligaments. It couldn’t have been any worse. The doctor said I would be in a cast for at least three months, and after that I would need physical therapy to get my strength back. He wanted to do surgery, but Dad always says, “The last thing you ever want ‘em to do is cut on you,” so we turned down the surgery. The doctor warned me that I might not be able to walk right again, but I decided to take my chances and try to heal on my own. I was discharged with painkillers, crutches, and a cast and hobbled to the car. As I rested over the next few days, reality began to set in. If I couldn’t jump or run or maybe not even walk, I wouldn’t be able to practice basketball. If I couldn’t practice, I wasn’t going to be able to play on the team my junior or senior years. If I couldn’t play basketball, I wasn’t going to get scouted by colleges, and I wasn’t going to earn a scholarship. My basketball career was over. Maybe it had all been a pipe dream, but it had been on my heart for so many years. In a split second, my life changed completely. My basketball dreams were crushed. I no longer had anything to work for. No more practices, scrimmages, or games. No more drills at home or three-point-shot marathons until dark. My freak accident not only destroyed my ankle, it destroyed my identity and everything for which I lived and breathed. I was going to have to reinvent myself. And that’s when everything started to go bad.

The iron game is a marathon and not a sprint.

As runners, we tend to think in exchanges and zero sum games: If I finish this race, I get a medal. If I run 10 miles today, I’ll have earned this burger. I have to hit these splits, otherwise, I failed. But sometimes, the things we get out of a run are far more abstract than a piece of tin to wear around our neck or a set of numbers on a stopwatch. A run can take us to places and people we would otherwise never have the opportunity to encounter.

Run with Endurance Let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus. HEBREWS 12:1-2 NLT Running was the first and, for many years, the only event of the ancient Olympic games. So it is no wonder that the New Testament writers use the metaphor to describe the Christian life. The first races were two-hundred-yard sprints. These gradually increased in length as the Olympic games continued to develop. The modern marathon commemorates the legendary run made by a Greek soldier named Pheidippides, who ran from the battlefield outside Marathon, Greece, to Athens to proclaim a single word: victory! Then he collapsed and died. The Christian race lasts a lifetime, with Christ Jesus as our goal, the prize that awaits us at the finish line in heaven. It can’t be run all-out as a sprint or no one would last the course. Though there was one race in the ancient games where the runners wore full armor, most of the time the ancient runners ran naked, stripping away anything that would slow them down. Obviously the writer of Hebrews was familiar with the ancient sport of running when he advised believers to run with endurance the race God set before them. Father; as we run the race You set before us this year, let us run with endurance, not allowing anything to distract us from the goal of Christ-likeness.

The longer you stay in this game, the more your chances for success will increase. As the great Michael Hauge once told me, this is a game of tenacity. Keep writing, and you will get there. The sooner you know this, the better off you will be: building a screenwriting career is about you the writer rather than about any one script. It is a marathon. It is hardly ever, even in the best cases, a sprint.

The Newlywed Game” on TV. One of the questions the wives had been given was, “When you’re making whoopee, it’s most like which Olympic sport: marathon running, gymnastics, or ice hockey?” When Cam came home from the station, she’d asked him what he thought. “Hockey,

Their names may have been the same, but as they liked to reiterate in interviews, the Ruperts had their own distinct personalities. Rupert P.’s likes and passions began and ended with juggling. Rupert X. was the pretty boy/rebel. Rupert L. couldn’t tell time. And Rupert K. was … well, he was a life ruiner. Rupert K. was beautiful. He had ruddy cheeks, but the cute kind that looked like he’d always just come from running a marathon out in the cold. He’d had braces when he was twelve, so his teeth were straight and perfect. He had brown hair that he liked to keep short and that he was always pushing back off his forehead, especially when he didn’t want to answer a television interviewer’s question. He loved fantasy video games, folk music, and baking thumbprint cookies with his grandma. When he smiled, sometimes he would bite the inside of his right cheek. He had a beauty mark on the nape of his neck, right where his heartbeat pulsed on his carotid artery. It was the shape of California and the size of a pinkie nail. Recently, he’d taken to wearing porkpie hats on the crown of his head, something his fans were now copying. He wore sunglasses a lot because his pale green eyes were super sensitive to the sun. He had a tiny scar beneath his lower lip that he got when he fell off the jungle gym when he was six. And he seemed to take pleasure in ruining my life with how perfect he was. Like I said. He was a life ruiner. All of the aforementioned things would’ve been enough to have me melting over him, but what really put Rupert K. into the man-of-my-wildest-dreams category was something he’d said in one of the first interviews he’d done.