Marathon Runner Motivational Quotes

Showing up begins long before you stand at the start. Prove yourself an exception in a world where people talk more than act. Intent without follow-through is hollow. Disappoint yourself enough times and empty is how you feel. Make yourself proud. Fill yourself up. Show up.

The hardest part of doing anything new is finding the courage to decide to at least try.

Instead of saying "I can’t do that," I want you to start saying "I can’t do that, yet!

Small steps add up to complete big journeys.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit. — Aristotle

The week before the marathon, sleep well. If normally you “get by” with five hours but require seven, make sure you get seven every night. The sleep you get the week leading up to the marathon is more important than the night before. The night before, you probably won’t sleep well due to anxiety, excitement and anticipation.

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.

What’s at the core of your desire to run a marathon? Couple this journey with value beyond miles. The meaning you ascribe to your effort crystalizes your motivation and fuels your commitment to stay the course and go the distance.

Advice of all kinds from experienced marathoners can sweep you away. Your training, reading and racing will expand your network and everyone has a story – the best shoes, clothes, energy foods. Don’t second-guess yourself or your process. Be friendly, act on advice that feels right for you and leave the rest.

Body follows mind. If the mind compares itself to others this could lead to overtraining. Tune out what other runners do and how fast they run. Tune in, instead, to how your body wants to increase speed and distance.

The goal of your first marathon is to finish. You have no time goal. You’re not endeavoring to win or place in your age category. Being a speed demon serves no purpose other than to court injury. Your only competition is you.

Allow seven months to responsibly train for your first marathon. This will minimize stress to your mind and body and give your existential nature time to incorporate a new way of being.

One of the most important ways for you to train, stay healthy and injury free is to listen closely to what your body tells you.

All discomfort is not equal. Learning to listen will help you distinguish among effort, fatigue and pain. To what degree, under what conditions and over what period of time your body experiences these sensations will determine how you respond.

The habit of listening and responding to what your body needs – how much, when and for how long whether food, water, rest, sleep or mileage – involves more than anything, willingness. If you are willing to practice – pay attention to signals, honor the signals you receive and train with mindfulness over distraction – then you are well on your way to listening becoming habit.

In a life full of work, family, civic responsibilities, commutes and errands, your training runs offer fertile opportunity to lean inward and listen.

Listening to your body does not imply a lack of grit but a willingness to honor true physical limits. Kenyan runners have a reputation for listening to their bodies but certainly do not take it easy on themselves; they are among the world’s most gifted and accomplished athletes.

Your body provides you with constant feedback that can help improve your running performance while minimizing biomechanical stress. Learn to differentiate between the discomfort of effort and the pain of injury. When you practice listening, you increase competence in persevering through the former and responding with respect and compassion to the latter.

There’s more to marathon day than running long. Learning how your body reacts to the early alarm, light breakfast and warm-up is key. Minimize surprises come race day. Run long the same time of day as the race.

The idea infusing this book: training for a marathon while remaining connected to our whole self. Mind, Body and Spirit – what animates our lives, uplifts us and stirs our energy – are not fixed, mutually exclusive states. They are organic trajectories expressed as an integrated spiral, their balance a process in which we are not conductor but collaborator.

Uncertain about an aspect of training? Read, consult others and experiment. In the end, though, listen to the body and the Voice Inside. Instead of dousing it with music, podcasts or talk radio, let the Voice Inside play out and wind past rumination to rich sediment that informs what drives and scares you.

Just like the body responds with sore muscles when we add mileage, the initial discomfort felt when we listen to the Voice Inside reflects growth. The good news: anxiety initially triggered by listening to our inner dialogue is short-term vs. the unnamed, interminable dread that piggybacks suppression. Even better, we can manage it with self-talk, deep breathing (inherent to running), the Tribe and social support.

Once flooded with light, our boogeymen diminish, no longer ogres in our imagination. We welcome internal dialogue for its treasures.

Boredom has a bad rap. Its true character reveals you are deep inside your comfort zone. Boredom is a docent beckoning toward the edges of a labyrinth.

If you’ve nurtured your Spirit and trained your Mind as well as your Body you’ll be prepared with everything you need to draft across the finish. Remember: all the training runs when you didn’t feel like running but ran anyway and felt so good physically but also about yourself. Envision the flash of friendly faces waiting to greet you. Celebrate that you have more energy now than you ever dreamed. Revel in the uptick in personal productivity and self-worth. Yes, you will run a marathon. And you will finish.

True behavior change is identity change. You might start a habit because of motivation, but the only reason you’ll stick with one is that it becomes part of your identity. Anyone can convince themselves to visit the gym or eat healthy once or twice, but if you don’t shift the belief behind the behavior, then it is hard to stick with long-term changes. Improvements are only temporary until they become part of who you are. The goal is not to read a book, the goal is to become a reader. The goal is not to run a marathon, the goal is to become a runner. The goal is not to learn an instrument, the goal is to become a musician.

Ultimately, it's what you are on the inside that gets you through a marathon. My constant motivation is the knowledge that ‘There will be a day when you can no longer do this. Today is NOT that day.’ (This is what I have written on the back of my race shirt.) So, if you are the type of person who surrenders easily, or does not commit to the training, or does not respect the distance, you will likely fail. Try a different sport. Maybe skydiving. It's hard to un-commit to that once you've jumped out of the plane. Notice something here. I have not mentioned anything about speed. Too many people put way too much emphasis on a marathon finisher's time. You can NOT judge a runner's effort based on their finishing time. One of my best friends ran the Detroit Marathon last weekend. She has stage 4 cancer, and finished the race in the back of the pack. But no one will ever convince me she is not an athlete, or that her effort was any less than an elite runner. Speed is relative. Distance is absolute.

A house built on a strong foundation can weather many storms!

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.

90% of "Can't Do It" is really "Don't Want To" or "I'm Afraid.

cheap grace” as “the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline. Communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ.”1

When we chase a positive outcome, on the other hand, the closer we get, the more motivated we are, and the harder we work. To see this phenomenon in action, go stand at the finish line of a marathon. You’ll see runners who have been limping for the past seven miles suddenly find their stride again when they see the finish line.