Marathon Medal Quotes

We eat and sleep and shuffle through the fog, walking a marathon with no finish line, no medals, no cheering.

Mind is everything; muscle, pieces of rubber. All that I am, I am because of my mind.” So said Paavo Nurmi, the Finn who won nine Olympic gold medals at distances from 1,500 meters to 10,000 meters.

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

Our quest for heroism is awkward. Not the obvious heroism that earns medals and applause but the heroism of daily life. Go to Princeton and you’re an educational hero; run a marathon and you’re an athletic hero; make loads of money and you’re a financial hero--the alpha hero of our culture. Each occupation and role in life has its own exacting rituals for advancement and reward, from the employee of the month parking space to stock options. The point is not the Princeton degree or the marathon medallion or the money or the parking space, it’s what these things say about us, that we are special and unique; that momentarily at least, we have risen head and shoulders above the clamoring masses to be giddily succored by premonitions of divinity.

I was visiting Marcus and his wife when a friend asked if she could talk to me alone. Teresa was the spouse of a Team member who’d served with Chris. We hadn’t spent a lot of time together, but we’d always had a connection. “I have something I want to give you,” she said. “I don’t know if it’s going to seem corny to you or what, but I kind of want to do it for me.” She pressed a medal into my hand. I looked at it--it was the medal she’d received for completing the Boston Marathon. “You and Chris kept me going,” she explained. “It was almost eerie how, when my legs were tired and I wanted to quit, Randy Travis’s song came on the iPod. It was the one he played at the memorial. My iPod was on random shuffle but it was always at just the right moment. I would hear that song and it would spur me on.” Maybe Chris was somehow behind that. People have told me of other inspirational incidents; each one, from simple to grand, has touched me with its beauty.

As I prepare for my marathon qualifier, I continue to run on Wednesdays with the regular group. We continue to navigate a path near Shorter’s house. His name still comes up frequently, as it has since I arrived in town. We’ll be running along the foothills or perhaps finishing up a workout back atop Mapleton Hill. Someone will say they saw Shorter at the liquor store and he was as warm and friendly as can be. Someone else will say he saw Shorter somewhere else, perhaps at McGuckin Hardware, and Frank couldn’t have been more of a jerk. Before I met with him, I’d come to see him the way many in Boulder see him: mysterious and difficult, a seemingly selfish man on a mockable crusade to win a gold medal to match the gold medal he already has. I’d grown certain that he was a miserable soul locked away in his house, the lonely long-distance runner stewing in demons of his own design.

A marathoner is an individual who displays exceptional endurance. True. But I think the exceptional marathoner is the individual who completes the great distance without all the launched confetti, without all the refueling stations, and without the receipt of a finisher's medal. Whether they know it or not.

I told Coach, ‘You know, I realize we’ve been working hard for this, but the medal almost doesn’t matter anymore because I feel like you all have elevated me in such a way that I never could have duplicated that.’ The reinforcement of the journey is so valuable, not just the prize or medal hanging around your neck. And we had such a special time pursuing that together. -- Denna Kastor, 2004 Olympic bronze medalist in the marathon

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.