Runner's World Quotes

You are the shuckiest shuck faced shuck in the world!

All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed.

In the end, the world always wins. That's just the way of things.

Dude, you tried to slice my you-know-what's off!" Thomas laughed, something that he hadn't done in a long time. He welcomed it happily. "Too bad I didn't. Could've saved the world from future little Minhos.

The problem, of course, was that [he] saw the world in black and white. And he got to decide what was black and what was white. You can't love a person who lives that way without fearing him too. Maybe even hating him a little.

Thomas turned to see Newt there, smiling. That grin sent a wave of reassurance through Thomas, as if he were finding out the world was okay again.

His lips pressed against her forehead and she felt him smile against her skin. "Believe me...the only place in the world I want to be is wherever you are." -Grant Morgan

Running isn't a sport for pretty boys...It's about the sweat in your hair and the blisters on your feet. Its the frozen spit on your chin and the nausea in your gut. It's about throbbing calves and cramps at midnight that are strong enough to wake the dead. It's about getting out the door and running when the rest of the world is only dreaming about having the passion that you need to live each and every day with. It's about being on a lonely road and running like a champion even when there's not a single soul in sight to cheer you on. Running is all about having the desire to train and persevere until every fiber in your legs, mind, and heart is turned to steel. And when you've finally forged hard enough, you will have become the best runner you can be. And that's all that you can ask for.

What kind of world has this become?" "A really sick one

There will be haters, there will be doubters, there will be non-believers, and then there will be you proving them wrong.

Newt was sitting on the ground with Frypan and Minho, all three looking as if they were waiting for the end of the world.

In mind's special processes, a ten-mile run takes far longer than the 60 minutes reported by a grandfather clock. Such time, in fact, hardly exists at all in the real world; it is all out on the trail somewhere, and you only go back to it when you are out there.

All the world shall be your enemy, prince of a thousand enemies. When they catch you they will kill but first they must catch, digger, runner, prince with all the swift excuse. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed.

Oh, I almost forgot. In case that anyone besides big-headed Near or the deluded murderer is reading these notes, then I shall at least perform the basic courtesy of introducing myself, here at the end of the prologue, I am your narrator, your navigator, your storyteller. For anyone else but those two, my identity may be of no interest to you, but I am the world's runner-up, the best dresser that died like a dog, Mihael Keehl. I once called myself Mello and was addressed by that name, but that was a long time ago. Good memories and nightmares.

You belong with me, Scarlett, haven't you figured that out? And the world is where we belong, all of it. We're not home-and-hearth people. We're the adventurers, the buccaneers, the blockade runners. Without challenge, we're only half alive. We can go anywhere, and as long as we're together, it will belong to us. But, my pet, we'll never belong to it. That's for other people, not for us.

The problem is simple: the world has too many people and not enough resources.

Every day is a fresh start; don't measure yourself by yesterday's troubles.

She means the world to me, and nothing will ever change that.

Nearly all runners do their slow runs too fast, and their fast runs too slow." Ken Mierke says. "So they're just training their bodies to burn sugar, which is the last thing a distance runner wants. You've got enough fat stored to run to California, so the more you train your body to burn fat instead of sugar, the longer your limited sugar tank is going to last." -The way to activate your fat-burning furnace is by staying below your aerobic threshold--your hard-breathing point--during your endurance runs.

For a long while I have believed – this is perhaps my version of Sir Darius Xerxes Cama’s belief in a fourth function of outsideness – that in every generation there are a few souls, call them lucky or cursed, who are simply born not belonging, who come into the world semi-detached, if you like, without strong affiliation to family or location or nation or race; that there may even be millions, billions of such souls, as many non-belongers as belongers, perhaps; that, in sum, the phenomenon may be as “natural” a manifestation of human nature as its opposite, but one that has been mostly frustrated, throughout human history, by lack of opportunity. And not only by that: for those who value stability, who fear transience, uncertainly, change, have erected a powerful system of stigmas and taboos against rootlessness, that disruptive, anti-social force, so that we mostly conform, we pretend to be motivated by loyalties and solidarities we do not really feel, we hide our secret identities beneath the false skins of those identities which bear the belongers’ seal of approval. But the truth leaks out in our dreams; alone in our beds (because we are all alone at night, even if we do not sleep by ourselves), we soar, we fly, we flee. And in the waking dreams our societies permit, in our myths, our arts, our songs, we celebrate the non-belongers, the different ones, the outlaws, the freaks. What we forbid ourselves we pay good money to watch, in a playhouse or a movie theater, or to read about between the secret covers of a book. Our libraries, our palaces of entertainment tell the truth. The tramp, the assassin, the rebel, the thief, the mutant, the outcast, the delinquent, the devil, the sinner, the traveler, the gangster, the runner, the mask: if we did not recognize in them our least-fulfilled needs, we would not invent them over and over again, in every place, in every language, in every time.

For every runner who tours the world running marathons, there are thousands who run to hear the leaves and listen to the rain, and look to the day when it is suddenly as easy as a bird in flight.

Every run is a work of art, a drawing on each day's canvas. Some runs are shouts and some runs are whispers. Some runs are eulogies and others celebrations. When you're angry, a run can be a sharp slap in the face. When happy, a run is your song. And when your running progresses enough to become the chrysalis through which your life is viewed, motivation is almost beside the point. Rather, it's running that motivates you for everything else the day holds.

You can’t be serious.” Thomas could only nod. Minho’s shoulders slumped, and his eyes fell to the floor. “How did the world get so shucked?” The words barely came out, low and full of pain. “I’m sorry,” Newt said, and there were tears streaming down his face. “I’m … I’m going to shoot if you don’t go. Now.

Some say I loved her to the point of madness, bordering on obsession. She said I put her on a pedestal that her real self couldn’t attain. Perhaps they’re all right. Perhaps I am mad. And if that’s the case, to be frank, I don’t give a damn. What I know is that she sets me on fire, and if you were to perform an intradermal test on me, you’d know when she was in it because you’d see the trails of blaze she left behind. Because that’s what I feel at the mere thought of her, and I’d rather live my life in flames than be numb without her.” He paused, and I let out a breath, but then he said one last thing. “Come back to me, my little Road Runner, my world is cold and boring without you.

I was running and deliberately lost my way. The world far off and nothing but my breath and the very next step and it’s like hypnosis. The feeling of conquering my own aliveness with no task but to keep going, making every way the right away and that’s a metaphor for everything.

To be a runner is to learn continual life lessons.

It was a strange world. But Thomas was alive, and he lived.

I wasn't born with any innate talent. I've never been naturally gifted at anything. I always had to work at it. The only way I knew how to succeed was to try harder than anyone else. Dogged persistence is what got me through life. But here was something I was half-decent at. Being able to run great distances was the one thing I could offer the world. Others might be faster, but I could go longer. My strongest quality is that I never give up.

But Wiley City is bad at age anyway. They see a fourteen-year-old runner outside the wall and say 'A suspicious man spotted near the border', but when a thirty-three-year-old Wiley-ite murder his girlfriend it's 'Good boy goes bad'.

What he saw seemed natural enough, and despite his sudden indifference to the world, it gave him a small squeeze of comfort that saddened him a little. Saddened that he'd never have a chance to live a full and meaningful life under the skies above.

He books it into that little playground there. I mean the guy is zooming like the Road Runner, skidding through the gravel and the slush and everything. I’m yelling, “Police, police! Stop, motherfucker!” ‘You do not yell, “Stop, motherfucker.”’ ‘I do. Because you know, Palace, this is it. This is the last chance I get to run after a perp yelling, “Stop, motherfucker.

The next generation is like the last runner in a very long relay race. The race to end extreme poverty has been a marathon, with the starter gun fired in 1800. This next generation has the unique opportunity to complete the job: to pick up the baton, cross the line, and raise its hands in triumph. The project must be completed. And we should have a big party when we are done.

During the First World War, I told her, Hitler had been a runner, delivering messages between the German trenches, and he was disgusted by seeing his fellow soldiers visit French brothels. To keep the Aryan bloodlines pure,and prevent the spread of venereal disease, he commissioned an inflatable doll that Nazi troops could take into battle. Hitler himself designed the dolls to have blond hair and large breasts. The Allied firebombing of Dresden destroyed the factory before the dolls could ever go into wide distribution.

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.

If people had true knowledge of the world perhaps they would not take up arms and so perhaps he could be an aggregator of information from distant places and then the world would be a more peaceful place. He had been perfectly serious. That illusion had lasted from age forty-nine to age sixty-five. And then he had come to think that what people needed, at bottom, was not only information but tales of the remote, the mysterious, dressed up as hard information. And he, like a runner, immobile in his smeared printing apron bringing it to them. Then the listeners would for a small space of time drift away into a healing place like curative waters.

A novel takes the courage of a marathon runner, and as long as you have to run, you might as well be a winning marathon runner. Serendipity and blind faith faith in yourself won't hurt a thing. All the bastards in the world will snicker and sneer because they haven't the talent to zip up their flies by themselves. To hell with them, particularly the critics. Stand in there, son, no matter how badly you are battered and hurt.

He is just a running boy, a half-seen figure from the streets, but the way running reveals some clue to being, the way a runner bares himself to consciousness, this is how the dark-skinned kid seems to open to the world, how the bloodrush of a dozen strides brings him into eloquence.

All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies,’” he read, “‘and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed.

Daddy said the world was dividing into two camps: runners and nesters.

The best runner leaves no tracks. —Tao Te Ching

We exist for one purpose and one purpose only: to save the world from catastrophe.

We are evil. They are kids. We are evil. We should stop, let the Munies have the world. We are evil. We can’t play God. We can’t do this to kids.

I noticed Wahid's boys, all three thin with dirt-caked faces and short-cropped brown hair under their skull caps, stealing furative glances at my digital wristwatch. ...I unsnapped the wristwatch and gave it to the youngest of the three boys. He muttered a sheepish "Tashakor." "It tells you the time in any city in the world," I told him. The boys, nodding politely passing the watch between them, taking turns trying it on. But they lost interest and, soon the watch sat abandoned on the straw mat. ...I understood now why the boys hadn't shown any interest in the watch. They hadn't been staring at the watch at all. They'd been staring at my food.

El-ahrairah, your people cannot rule the world, for I will not have it so. All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed.

He finally pulled it all back into his heart, sucking in the painful tide of his misery. In the Glade, Chuck had become a symbol for him—a beacon that somehow they could make everything right again in the world. Sleep in beds. Get kissed goodnight. Have bacon and eggs for breakfast, go to a real school. Be happy. But now Chuck was gone. And his limp body, to which Thomas still clung, seemed a cold talisman—that not only would those dreams of a hopeful future never come to pass, but that life had never been that way in the first place. That even in escape, dreary days lay ahead. A life of sorrow. His returning memories were sketchy at best. But not much good floated in the muck. Thomas reeled in the pain, locked it somewhere deep inside him. He did it for Teresa. For Newt and Minho. Whatever darkness awaited them, they’d be together, and that was all that mattered right then.

Thresholds don’t exist in terms of our bodies. Our speed and strength depend on our body, but the real thresholds, those that make us give up or continue the struggle, those that enable us to fulfill our dreams, depend not on our bodies but on our minds and the hunger we feel to turn dreams into reality.

WORLD IN CATASTROPHE: KILLZONE EXPERIMENT DEPARTMENT

Glad you came,” Gally said in his raspy voice. “Because the end of the world is upon us.

As a runner, that's what I know how to do. To strike out on a trail and just go and go and go like there's no tomorrow; to run until my problems fade beneath my feet and the world becomes new again.

In this large and fierce world of ours, there are many, many unpleasant places to be. You can be in a river swarming with angry electric eels, or in a supermarket filled with vicious long-distance runners. You can be in a hotel that has no room service, or you can be lost in a forest that is slowly filling up with water. You can be in a hornet's nest or in an abandoned airport or in the office of a pediatric surgeon, but one of the most unpleasant things that can happen is to find yourself in a quandary. Which is where the Baudelaire orphans found themselves that night. Finding yourself in a quandary means that everything seems confusing and dangerous and you don't know what in the world to do about it, and it is one of the worst unpleasantries you can encounter.

And if all has gone according to plan, we have sent the brightest, the strongest, the toughest of our subjects to a safe place, where they can begin civilization anew while the rest of the world is driven to extinction.

ALL HE COULD SEE, IN EVERY DIRECTION, WAS WATER. It was June 23, 1943. Somewhere on the endless expanse of the Pacific Ocean, Army Air Forces bombardier and Olympic runner Louie Zamperini lay across a small raft, drifting westward. Slumped alongside him was a sergeant, one of his plane’s gunners. On a separate raft, tethered to the first, lay another crewman, a gash zigzagging across his forehead. Their bodies, burned by the sun and stained yellow from the raft dye, had winnowed down to skeletons. Sharks glided in lazy loops around them, dragging their backs along the rafts, waiting.

If records refuse to be broken, shatter them.

She spoke to him before the world fell apart".

Let us live so that when we come to die, even the undertaker will be sorry,” Mark Twain

It’s gonna be a buggin’ long time before the world can ever get back to normal. Even if it can—we’ll never see it.

There are days when you don't feel like running. Those are the days you have to do it. Discipline is doing what you don't want to do so you can do what you really want to do. Got that?

A month earlier, twenty-six-year-old Zamperini had been one of the greatest runners in the world, expected by many to be the first to break the four-minute mile, one of the most celebrated barriers in sport. Now his Olympian’s body had wasted to less than one hundred pounds and his famous legs could no longer lift him. Almost everyone outside of his family had given him up for dead.

I would divide the senior executives of the engineering world into two categories, the starters and the runners, the men with a creative instinct who can start a new venture and the men who can run it to make it show a profit.... I was a starter and useless as a runner.

What he would become. But he had a plan, didn't he? Several plans, depending on the contingencies. But each plan had the same ending--it was just a matter of how he got there. He would last for as long as he needed to write what he needed in that journal. Something about that simple, empty little book, waiting to be filled. It had given him a purpose, a spark, a winding course to ensure the last days of his life had reason and meaning. A mark, left on the world. He would write all the sanity he could muster out of his head before it was taken over by its opposite.

RUNNERS wearing top-of-the-line shoes are 123 percent more likely to get injured than runners in cheap shoes, according to a study led by Bernard Marti, M.D., a preventative-medicine specialist at Switzerland’s University of Bern.

With heads thrown back, legs pumping out of sync, Louie and Lash drove for the tape. With just a few yards remaining, Lash began inching up, drawing even. The two runners, legs rubbery with exhaustion, flung themselves past the judges in a finish so close, Louie later said, “you couldn’t put a hair between us.

Daddy said the world was dividing into two camps: runners and nesters. Runners headed for the hills—or Thunder Mountain. Nesters boarded up the windows, stocked up on the canned goods and ammunition, and kept the TV tuned to CNN 24/7.

The world is not at all short on this type of thing, it turns out. All down the years, words have been flung like pieces of shit, only to get stuck on a truck bumper with up-yours pride. Rednecks, moonshiners, ridge runners, hicks. Deplorables.

Can it be, I thought, can it actually be? .......could he be all of them: Rine the runner and Rine the gambler and Rine the briber and Rine the lover and Rinehart the Reverend? Could he himself be both rind and heart? .....Rinehart the rounder. It was true as I was true. His world was possibility and he knew it. He was years ahead of me and I was a fool. I must have been crazy and blind. The world in which we lived was without boundaries...All boundaries down, freedom was not only the recognition of necessity, it was the recognition of possibility. And sitting there trembling I caught a brief glimpse of the possibilities posed by Rinehart’s multiple personalities…

Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and turns into a racket.

It was Homaira and me against the world. And I'll tell you this, Amir Jan : in the end, the world always wins. That's just the way of things.

Runners in shoes that cost more than $95 were more than twice as likely to get hurt as runners in shoes that cost less than $40.

I’m a good runner any day of the week. Scared shitless I’m world class.

When your feet are in the right place, your mind will follow.

To live with ghosts requires solitude.

The world, the people I work for”—he gestured to nothing in particular all around him—“it’s all turned my heart into a small lump of black coal.

E atat de simplu. Trebuie doar sa-ti misti picioarele. Pentru ca, daca nu intelegi ca te-ai nascut pentru a alerga, nu-ti negi doar istoria, iti negi propria fiinta.

Travis felt what it was that Casey felt: the Star Runner, to tame that Star Runner, it would be conquering worlds

Stir the world with your skills, shake the world with your talents, move the world with your brilliance, change the world with your genius.

send more vitamins down the toilet than their bodies can absorb. If you eat a reasonably balanced diet and live in the modern Western world, you likely get enough vitamins and minerals.

Though she was obviously joking, she didn’t even crack a smile. Thomas had to hide a wince. “Funny, Brenda.” “Glad to see you still have a sense of humor about it,” Teresa said. But her face could’ve turned water to ice. Thomas looked down at his watch. Fifty-five minutes left. “I, um, need to talk to Newt.” He turned and quickly walked away before either girl could say anything. He wanted to be as far away from both of them as possible. Newt was sitting on the ground with Frypan and Minho, all three looking as if they were waiting for the end of the world.

Humans can tolerate considerable temporary dehydration providing that we rehydrate in a day or so. In fact, the best marathon runners drink only about 200 milliliters per hour during a race.

I was in a coma for a few days, and when I woke up, speaking out to Rachel seemed the most natural thing in the world. If she hadn’t accepted it and spoken back, I’m pretty sure I would’ve lost it.

Leavitt appeared, looming over him, a syringe in his hand. “I thought we’d come to an understanding, son. I was really hoping I wouldn’t have to do this.” He knelt down and stuck the needle in Thomas’s neck, compressed the syringe with his thumb. Before he passed out, Thomas looked at Teresa again, their eyes meeting for just a few precious seconds. The world had already started to blur when they dragged her away, but he clearly heard what she called out to him. “Someday we’ll be bigger.” —

You certainly remember this scene from dozens of films: a boy and a girl are running hand in hand in a beautiful spring (or summer) landscape. Running, running, running and laughing. By laughing the two runners are proclaiming to the whole world, to audiences in all the movie theaters: "We're happy, we're glad to be in the world, we're in agreement with being!" It's a silly scene, a cliche, but it expresses a basic human attitude: serious laughter, laughter "beyond joking." All churches, all underwear manufacturers, all generals, all political parties, are in agreement about that kind of laughter, and all of them rush to put the image of the two laughing runners on the billboards advertising their religion, their products, their ideology, their nation, their sex, their dishwashing powder.

Dude, you tried to slice my you-know-whats off!” Thomas laughed, something he hadn’t done in a long time. He welcomed it happily. “Too bad I didn’t. Could’ve saved the world from future little Minhos.

The world breaks little girls. It stomps out our will, our joy, our curiosity—and replaces them with disdain, cynicism, and the need to fit into neat and tiny boxes. I learned that young, in kindergarten, when the other kids called Stella a show-off for raising her hand during class, or when the boys in first grade said I was bossy for leading a reading circle. When Stella and I would overhear the other moms at the Elite Youth Runner’s Club: The Steckler sisters are just a little much. That’s how we were described while the boys were sprinting around the playground kicking and screaming, breaking and biting. The world doesn’t celebrate girls who take up space, who demand to be heard, who are just a little much.

To tell the truth, I don’t really understand the causes behind my runner’s blues. Or why now it’s beginning to fade. It’s too early to explain it well. Maybe the only thing I can definitely say about it is this: That’s life. Maybe the only thing we can do is accept it, without really knowing what’s going on. Like taxes, the tide rising and falling, John Lennon’s death, and miscalls by referees at the World Cup.

You were amazing,” Scott said. “Yeah,” I said. “Amazingly slow.” It had taken me over twelve hours, meaning that Scott and Arnulfo could have run the course all over again and still beaten me. “That’s what I’m saying,” Scott insisted. “I’ve been there, man. I’ve been there a lot. It takes more guts than going fast.

With school turning out more runners, jumpers, racers, tinkerers, grabbers, snatchers, fliers and swimmers instead of examiners, critics, knowers and imaginative creators, the word 'intellectual' of course, became the swear word it deserved to be. You always dread the unfamiliar. Surely you remember the boy in your own school class who was exceptionally 'bright,' did most of the reciting and answering while the others sat like so many leaden idols, hating him. And wasn't it this bright boy you selected for beatings and tortures after hours? Of course it was. We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man's mind. Who knows who might be the target of a well-read man? Me? I won't stomach them for a minute. And so when houses were finally fireproofed completely, all over the world [...] there was no longer need of firemen for the old purposes. They were given the new job, as custodians of our peace of mind, the focus of our understandable and rightful dread of being inferior: official censors, judges and executors.

Other runners try to disassociate from fatigue by blasting iPods or imagining the roar of the crowd in Olympic Stadium, but Scott had a simpler method: it’s easy to get outside yourself when you’re thinking about someone else.

Perhaps it is to fulfill this primal urge that runners and joggers get up every morning and pound the streets in cities all over the world. To feel the stirring of something primeval deep down in the pits of our bellies. To feel "a little bit wild." Running is not exactly fun. Running hurts. It takes effort. Ask any runner why he runs, and he will probably look at you with a wry smile and say, "I don't know." But something keeps us going. We may obsess about our PBs and mileage count, but these things alone are not enough to get us out running... What really drives us is something else, this need to feel human, to reach below the multitude of layers of roles and responsibilites that societ y has placed on us, down below the company name tags, and even the father, husband, and son, labels, to the pure, raw human being underneath. At such moments, our rational mind becomes redundant. We move from thought to feeling.

You could have one of the greatest singing voices of all time, but one injury to the throat could end your entire career. You could be the fastest runner in the world, but one back injury could change all of that. You could be the most intelligent professor at Harvard, but one stroke could send you into early retirement. You could love your wife more than any man has ever loved a wife, but one harrowing battle with infertility could turn a couple’s love into resentment.

There are only three real men in this world, Amir," he'd say. He'd count them off on his fingers: America the brash saviour, Britain and Israel. "The rest of them-" he used to wave his hand and make a phht sound "-they're like gossiping old women.

...I couldn't see him anymore, and I couldn't see anybody, and I knew what the loneliness of the long-distance runner running across country felt like, realizing that as far as I was concerned this feeling was the only honesty and realness there was in the world and I knowing it would be no different ever, no matter what I felt at odd times, and no matter what anybody else tried to tell me

And now to that Victim whose Sign rose above the world two thousand years ago, to be menaced now by that other sign now rising, I say a prayer of contrition. I, whom you have seen as irreverent and irreligious, now pray in the name of Chuckler and Hoosier and Runner, in the name of Smoothface, Gentlemen, Amish, and Oakstump, Ivy-League and Big-Picture, in the name of all those who suffered in the jungles and on the beaches, from Anzio to Normandy--and in the name of the immolated: of Texan, Rutherford, Chicken, Loudmouth, of the Artist and White-Man, Souvenirs and Racehorse, Dreadnought and Commando--of all these and the others, dear Father, forgive us for that awful cloud.

Most of what I know about writing I’ve learned through running every day. These are practical, physical lessons. How much can I push myself? How much rest is appropriate—and how much is too much? How far can I take something and still keep it decent and consistent? When does it become narrow-minded and inflexible? How much should I be aware of the world outside, and how much should I focus on my inner world? To what extent should I be confident in my abilities, and when should I start doubting myself? I know that if I hadn’t become a long-distance runner when I became a novelist, my work would have been vastly different. How different? Hard to say. But something would have definitely been different.

He picks up speed and seems to lose his gangliness, the slouchy funk of hormones and unbelonging and all the stammering things that seal his adolescence. He is just a running boy, a half-seen figure from the streets, but the way running reveals some clue to being, the way a runner bares himself to consciousness, this is how the dark-skinned kid seems to open to the world, how the bloodrush of a dozen strides bring him into eloquence.

One woman tells me, as we sit on the grass afterwards, that she thinks running is like getting drunk in reverse. With drinking, it feels great at first, but then you start feeling awful. With running, you feel awful first, but then, after you finish, you feel great. That sounds like a much better deal. *

One of the most extraordinary stories of reframing is that of Roger Bannister, the first person to run a mile in less than four minutes. Bannister was a medical school student who couldn’t afford a trainer or a special runner’s diet. He didn’t even have time to run more than thirty minutes a day, squeezed in around his medical studies. Yet Bannister did not focus on all the reasons why he logically had no chance of reaching his goal. He instead refocused on accomplishing his goal in his own way. On the morning he made world history, he got up, ate his usual breakfast, did his required hospital rounds, and then caught a bus to the track.

These are among the people I've tried to know twice, the second time in memory and language. Through them, myself. They are what I've become, in ways I don't understand but which I believe will accrue to a rounded truth, a second life for me as well as them. Cracking jokes in the mandatory American manner of people self-concious about death. This is the humor of violent surprise. How do you connect things? Learn their names. It was a strange conversation, full of hedged remarks and obscure undercurrents, perfect in its way. I was not a happy runner. I did it to stay interested in my body, to stay informed, and to set up clear lines of endeavor, a standard to meet, a limit to stay within. I was just enough of a puritan to think there must be some virtue in rigorous things, although I was careful not to overdo it. I never wore the clothes. the shorts, tank top, high socks. Just running shoes and a lightweight shirt and jeans. I ran disguised as an ordinary person. -When are you two going to have children? -We're our own children. In novels lately the only real love, the unconditional love I ever come across is what people feel for animals. Dolphins, bears, wolves, canaries. I would avoid people, stop drinking. There was a beggar with a Panasonic. This is what love comes down to, things that happen and what we say about them. But nothing mattered so much on this second reading as a number of spirited misspellings. I found these mangled words exhilarating. He'd made them new again, made me see how they worked, what they really were. They were ancient things, secret, reshapable.The only safety is in details. Hardship makes the world obscure. How else could men love themselves but in memory, knowing what they know? The world has become self-referring. You know this. This thing has seeped into the texture of the world. The world for thousands of years was our escape, was our refuge. Men hid from themselves in the world. We hid from God or death. The world was where we lived, the self was where we went mad and died. But now the world has made a self of its own.

What the gods are supposed to be, what the priests are commissioned to say, is not a sensational secret like what those running messengers of the Gospel had to say. Nobody else except those messengers has any Gospel; nobody else has any good news; for the simple reason that nobody else has any news. Those runners gather impetus as they run. Ages afterwards they still speak as if something had just happened. They have not lost the speed and momentum of messengers; they have hardly lost, as it were, the wild eyes of witnesses. In the Catholic Church, which is the cohort of the message, there are still those headlong acts of holiness that speak of something rapid and recent; a self-sacrifice that startles the world like a suicide. But it is not a suicide; it is not pessimistic; it is still as optimistic as St. Francis of the flowers and birds. It is newer in spirit than the newest schools of thought; and it is almost certainly on the eve of new triumphs. For these men serve a mother who seems to grow more beautiful as new generations rise up and call her blessed. We might sometimes fancy that the Church grows younger as the world grows old.

Distance running was revered because it was indispensable; it was the way we survived and thrived and spread across the planet. You ran to eat and to avoid being eaten; you ran to find a mate and impress her, and with her you ran off to start a new life together. You had to love running, or you wouldn’t live to love anything else.

Stop it!“ Newt yelled. Stop it now!“ Thomas has been frozen in place, crouching as he waited for an opportunity to jump in and help Minho. But he twisted around to see that Newt was holding his Launcher in shooting position, his eyes wild with fury. “Stop or I’ll start shooting and not give a buggin’ piece of klunk who gets hit.” ….. Thomas couldn’t believe the sudden turn of events. He looked at Newt with wide eyes, glad he’d done what he had, and happy he hadn’t aimed the Launcher at him or Minho. “I told him to stop,” Newt half whispered. Then he aimed the weapon at Minho, but it was shaking because his arms were. “Now you guys leave. No more discussion. I’m sorry.“ Minho held up his hands. “You’re going to shoot me? Old pal?” “Go,” Newt said. „I asked nicely. Now I’m telling. This is hard enough. Go.“ „Newt, let’s go outside..“ „Go!“ Newt stepped closer and aimed more fiercely. „Get out of here!“ Thomas hated what he was seeing – the complete wilderness that had taken over Newt. His whole body trembled and his eyes had lost any hint of sanity. He was losing it, completely. “Let’s go,” Thomas said, one of the saddest things he’d ever heard himself say. „Come on.” Minho’s gaze snapped to Thomas, and he looked like his heart had been shattered. “You can’t be serious.” Thomas could only nod. Minho’s shoulders slumped, and his eyes fell to the floor. “How did the world get so shucked?” The words barely came out, low and full of pain. “I’m sorry,” Newt said, and there were tears streaming down his face. “I’m .. I’m going to shoot if you don’t go. Now.

What’s the last thing you remember?” I ask instead. “Dancing.” “You were at a bar, a nightclub? In Boston?” It takes her a bit, but finally, “Y-y-yes.” “Did you drink too much?” A small hiccup I take to be yes. Kids, I think. We’re all so young and fearless once. Nightclubs are nothing but a source of adventure. And a fourth, fifth, sixth rum runner the best idea in the world. I hated myself for my own stupidity, waking up in a coffin-size box. Minute after minute, day after day, so much time to do nothing but repent. And

What's important to recognize is that in the U.S. today, tens of millions of kids start life on a uneven playing field. Imagine having to try to run a race if you started ten yards behind everyone else, hadn't eaten breakfast that morning, or maybe even dinner the night before, had slept in your third homeless shelter that month and didn't have shoes that fit right. Catching up would be really, really hard. With almost 32 million American kids living in low-income families, that means four out of ten runners are starting far back.

One day the whole world—every town and city—will be like it was in North Carolina. And then everyone will be dead.

keep hearing the world is in klunky shape.

I take pleasure in my solitude. There are very few people in the world I can spend extended periods of time around without eventually feeling agitated by them.

A star doesn’t need words to tell the world what it does; it just shines.

Coach Vigil believed you had to become a strong person before you could become a strong runner. So

as shoes wore down and their cushioning thinned, runners gained more foot control.

You haven’t lived until you’ve competed against the fastest runners in the world wearing shoes made of cod.

It was Homaira and me against the world. And I’ll tell you this, Amir jan: In the end, the world always wins. That’s just the way of things.

is the little stories of our day that hold the only things of value in this world.

In a sane world, we would be heroes. Teachers would applaud as we walked into the school. There is the smart one, the one who wants to be a writer. And there is the runner.

with finding a cure for some disease?” “It has everything in the world to do with it.” Rat Man sighed

One pacer got a little freaked out after she saw her runner stare into space for a while and then tell the empty air, “I know you’re not real.

You know how the world is. New disease, new drugs. Even if it doesn’t do jack to the illness itself, they still come up with stuff.

You are the author of your own destiny; write yourself into history books.

The death toll had gotten so bad, Mexico would eventually rank second only to Iraq in the number of killed or kidnapped reporters.

Her short blond hair shifted in the wind, and she appeared the very definition of peace and comfort. Like she belonged in the world that had existed before everything was scorched.

Trent Stellingwerff, a Canadian exercise physiologist and coach, who administers carb-fasted training with elite runners, including 2:10 marathoner Reed Coolsaet.

He knew it could be a deer, a squirrel, lots of things. But he hadn’t survived a year of the sun-ravaged world by making assumptions.

Hassan was drawn to the mystery of words, seduced by a secret world forbidden to him.

It was Homaira and me against the world. And I'll tell you this, Amir jan: In the end, the world always wins. that's just the way of things.

I wanted to pull him close, hold him, tell him the world had been unkind to him, not the other way around.

That there are bad people in this world, and sometimes bad people stay bad. Sometimes you have to stand up to them.

I would tell him what it felt like to stand in that stadium and watch Jesse Owens beat Adolf Hitler’s best runners to win the gold medal. And then, what it felt like, afterward, to interview the son of black sharecroppers from Alabama knowing that he had just changed the world. I would tell him about standing in the shadow of the Hindenburg as it passed over the field.

When I was a college runner, I had teammates whose drive and determination seemed almost boundless on the track, and nearly absent in the classroom, and vice versa. Instead of asking whether someone is gritty, we should ask when they are. “If you get someone into a context that suits them,” Ogas said, “they’ll more likely work hard and it will look like grit from the outside.

Because when on a raw and frosty morning I get up at five o'clock and stand shivering my belly off on the stone floor and all the rest still have another hour to snooze before the bells go, I slink downstairs through all the corridors to the big outside door with a permit running-card in my fist, I feel like the first and last man in the world, both at once, if you can believe what I'm trying to say.

Prone to Cling or Run Because we had no balance in our emotional worlds growing up, when we start developing other relationships in life, our insecurities create us into runners or clingers. I have actually been both in my life.

They’ll go to where the governments have gathered and make sure the world ends, even though that’s not their intent. They’ll carry on about finding an antidote and taking down the makeshift government. But all they’ll really do is spread the virus once and for all. Make sure they finish what the sun flares started. Fools, every last one of them.” Anton collapsed back into a heap on the cot, and a few seconds later the sounds of his snores filled the room.

A ‘library’ turned out to be a room where books were read. The fact that people used to have so many books that they needed a whole separate room just to store them, much less a word for the room, said everything Lan guessed she needed to know about the way the world used to be. In Norwood, loose pictures and salvaged magazines were locked up like other valuables. The mayor had a few books, including the town ledger where Lan’s own name had been written on the day of her birth and presumably crossed out along with her mother’s the day she’d left, but all of them together could have fit on one shelf. Here was a room the size of the dining hall, two stories tall and lined in bookshelves, with ladders on runners along every wall so that no shelf was out of reach. These were books that could not be measured in hundreds or even thousands, but in some greater number that had no name. If only she knew how to read.

In a competition of love we would not be running against one another, but with one another. We would be trying to gain victory for all humanity. If I am a faster runner than you, you may feel bad seeing me pass you in the race, but if you know that we are both racing to make our world better, you will feel good knowing that we are all racing toward a common goal, a mutual reward. In a competition of love we'll all share in the victory, no matter who comes in first.

this ninety-five-year-old man came hiking twenty-five miles over the mountain. Know why he could do it? Because no one ever told him he couldn’t. No one ever told him he oughta be off dying somewhere in an old age home. You live up to your own expectations, man.

In every interview I’m asked what’s the most important quality a novelist has to have. It’s pretty obvious: talent. Now matter how much enthusiasm and effort you put into writing, if you totally lack literary talent you can forget about being a novelist. This is more of a prerequisite than a necessary quality. If you don’t have any fuel, even the best car won’t run.The problem with talent, though, is that in most cases the person involved can’t control its amount or quality. You might find the amount isn’t enough and you want to increase it, or you might try to be frugal and make it last longer, but in neither case do things work out that easily. Talent has a mind of its own and wells up when it wants to, and once it dries up, that’s it. Of course, certain poets and rock singers whose genius went out in a blaze of glory—people like Schubert and Mozart, whose dramatic early deaths turned them into legends—have a certain appeal, but for the vast majority of us this isn’t the model we follow. If I’m asked what the next most important quality is for a novelist, that’s easy too: focus—the ability to concentrate all your limited talents on whatever’s critical at the moment. Without that you can’t accomplish anything of value, while, if you can focus effectively, you’ll be able to compensate for an erratic talent or even a shortage of it. I generally concentrate on work for three or four hours every morning. I sit at my desk and focus totally on what I’m writing. I don’t see anything else, I don’t think about anything else. … After focus, the next most important thing for a novelist is, hands down, endurance. If you concentrate on writing three or four hours a day and feel tired after a week of this, you’re not going to be able to write a long work. What’s needed of the writer of fiction—at least one who hopes to write a novel—is the energy to focus every day for half a year, or a year, or two years. … Fortunately, these two disciplines—focus and endurance—are different from talent, since they can be acquired and sharpened through training. You’ll naturally learn both concentration and endurance when you sit down every day at your desk and train yourself to focus on one point. This is a lot like the training of muscles I wrote of a moment ago. You have to continually transmit the object of your focus to your entire body, and make sure it thoroughly assimilates the information necessary for you to write every single day and concentrate on the work at hand. And gradually you’ll expand the limits of what you’re able to do. Almost imperceptibly you’ll make the bar rise. This involves the same process as jogging every day to strengthen your muscles and develop a runner’s physique. Add a stimulus and keep it up. And repeat. Patience is a must in this process, but I guarantee results will come. In private correspondence the great mystery writer Raymond Chandler once confessed that even if he didn’t write anything, he made sure he sat down at his desk every single day and concentrated. I understand the purpose behind his doing this. This is the way Chandler gave himself the physical stamina a professional writer needs, quietly strengthening his willpower. This sort of daily training was indispensable to him. … Most of what I know about writing I’ve learned through running every day. These are practical, physical lessons. How much can I push myself? How much rest is appropriate—and how much is too much? How far can I take something and still keep it decent and consistent? When does it become narrow-minded and inflexible? How much should I be aware of the world outside, and how much should I focus on my inner world? To what extent should I be confident in my abilities, and when should I start doubting myself? I know that if I hadn’t become a long-distance runner when I became a novelist, my work would have been vastly different. How different? Hard to say. But something would definitely have been different.

All the books helped him in some way or another. Quenton Cassidy was not enthusiastically going about the heady business of breaking world records or capturing some coveted prize; such ideas would have been laughable to him in the bland grind of his daily lifestyle. He was merely trying to slip into a lifestyle that he could live with, strenuous but not unendurable by any means, out of which if the corpuscles and the capillaries and the electrolytes were properly aligned in their own mysterious configurations, he might do even better what he had already done quite well. He was trying to switch gears; at least that is how he thought of it. And though it was a somewhat frightful thing to contemplate for very long, he was really pulling out all the stops. After this he would have no excuses, ever again.

All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed.

Sometimes I dream of revolution, a bloody coup d’etat by the second rank—troupes of actors slaughtered by their understudies, magicians sawn in half by indefatigably smiling glamour girls, cricket teams wiped out by marauding bands of twelfth men—I dream of champions chopped down by rabbit-punching sparring partners while eternal bridesmaids turn and rape the bridegrooms over the sausage rolls and parliamentary private secretaries plant bombs in the Minister’s Humber—comedians die on provincial stages, robbed of their feeds by mutely triumphant stooges— —and—march— —an army of assistants and deputies, the seconds-in-command, the runners-up, the right-handmen—storming the palace gates wherein the second son has already mounted the throne having committed regicide with a croquet-mallet—stand-ins of the world stand up!—

There once was a girl named Destiny. She was the fastest runner in the world. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t outrun who she was. Then she met a boy. He said his name was also Destiny, and for the first time in her life, she didn’t feel like she was running alone.  

In a world without caste, instead of a false swagger over our own tribe or family or ascribed community, we would look upon all of humanity with wonderment: the lithe beauty of an Ethiopian runner, the bravery of a Swedish girl determined to save the planet, the physics-defying aerobatics of an African-American Olympian, the brilliance of a composer of Puerto Rican descent who can rap the history of the founding of America at 144 words a minute—all of these feats should fill us with astonishment at what the species is capable of and gratitude to be alive for this.

What happened to the dead bodies?” Question after question, a chorus of them, all melding into one roar of confusion. As for Thomas, he didn’t bother. The stranger wasn’t going to tell them anything. Couldn’t they all see that? Rat Man waited patiently, ignoring them, those dark eyes darting back and forth between the Gladers as they spoke. His gaze settled on Thomas, who sat there, silent, staring back at him, hating him. Hating WICKED. Hating the world. “You shanks shut up!” Minho finally shouted. The questions stopped instantly. “This shuck-face ain’t answering,

more than 90 percent of the female runners come home with a buckle, while 50 percent of the men come up with an excuse. Not even Ken Chlouber can explain the sky-high female finishing rate, but he can damn well exploit it: “All my pacers are women,” Chlouber says. “They get the job done.

[Herbert] Hoover, had he been challenged with the overpowering implausibility of his notion that economic life is a race that is won by the ablest runner, would have had a ready answer from his own biography: had he not started in life as a poor orphan and worked in the mines for a pittance, and had he not become first a millionaire and then President of the United States? There are times when nothing is more misleading than personal experience, and the man whose experience has embraced only success is likely to be a forlorn and alien figure when his whole world begins to fail.

So as soon as I tell myself I'm the first man ever to be dropped into the world, and as soon as I take that first flying leap into the frosty grass of an early morning when even birds haven't the heart to whistle, I get to thinking, and that's what I like. I go my rounds in a dream, turning at lane or footpath corners without knowing I'm turning, leaping brooks without knowing they're there, and shouting good morning to the early cow-milker without seeing him. It's a treat being a long-distance runner, out in the world by yourself with not a soul to make you bad-tempered or tell you what to do.

...it occurred to him that maybe the world wasn't so bad after all... gradually details he hadn't noticed began to come into focus... Almost everyone looked uneasy. They all seemed to be avoiding each other-and not just to be polite. They seemed to take serious measures to stay clear of everyone else.

But Thomas didn’t have time to finish his thought. Gally reached behind himself, pulled something long and shiny from his back pocket. The lights of the chamber flashed off the silvery surface—a wicked-looking dagger, gripped tightly in his fingers. With unexpected speed, he reared back and threw the knife at Thomas. As he did so, Thomas heard a shout to his right, sensed movement. Toward him. The blade windmilled, its every turn visible to Thomas, as if the world had turned to slow motion. As if it did so for the sole purpose of allowing him to feel the terror of seeing such a thing. On the knife came, flipping over and over, straight at him. A strangled cry was forming in his throat; he urged himself to move but he couldn’t. Then, inexplicably, Chuck was there, diving in front of him. Thomas felt as if his feet had been frozen in blocks of ice; he could only stare at the scene of horror unfolding before him, completely helpless.

I asked, Did she know Adolf Hitler invented the blow-up sex doll? And Ms. Wright’s black sunglasses turned to look at me. During the First World War, I told her, Hitler had been a runner, delivering messages between the German trenches, and he was disgusted by seeing his fellow soldiers visit French brothels. To keep the Aryan blood-lines pure, and prevent the spread of venereal disease, he commissioned an inflatable doll that Nazi troops could take into battle. Hitler himself designed the dolls to have blond hair and large breasts. The Allied firebombing of Dresden destroyed the factory before the dolls could go into wide distribution. True fact.

No matter what plan you choose or how fast or far you go, you’re a runner. If you combine walking with running, you’re a runner. If you run twice a week, you’re a runner. If you view yourself as a runner, you will become a better one. If you’ve never run & want to become one, you can be a runner. All it takes is interest (and a good pair of running shoes).

The Sun King had dinner each night alone. He chose from forty dishes, served on gold and silver plate. It took a staggering 498 people to prepare each meal. He was rich because he consumed the work of other people, mainly in the form of their services. He was rich because other people did things for him. At that time, the average French family would have prepared and consumed its own meals as well as paid tax to support his servants in the palace. So it is not hard to conclude that Louis XIV was rich because others were poor. But what about today? Consider that you are an average person, say a woman of 35, living in, for the sake of argument, Paris and earning the median wage, with a working husband and two children. You are far from poor, but in relative terms, you are immeasurably poorer than Louis was. Where he was the richest of the rich in the world’s richest city, you have no servants, no palace, no carriage, no kingdom. As you toil home from work on the crowded Metro, stopping at the shop on the way to buy a ready meal for four, you might be thinking that Louis XIV’s dining arrangements were way beyond your reach. And yet consider this. The cornucopia that greets you as you enter the supermarket dwarfs anything that Louis XIV ever experienced (and it is probably less likely to contain salmonella). You can buy a fresh, frozen, tinned, smoked or pre-prepared meal made with beef, chicken, pork, lamb, fish, prawns, scallops, eggs, potatoes, beans, carrots, cabbage, aubergine, kumquats, celeriac, okra, seven kinds of lettuce, cooked in olive, walnut, sunflower or peanut oil and flavoured with cilantro, turmeric, basil or rosemary … You may have no chefs, but you can decide on a whim to choose between scores of nearby bistros, or Italian, Chinese, Japanese or Indian restaurants, in each of which a team of skilled chefs is waiting to serve your family at less than an hour’s notice. Think of this: never before this generation has the average person been able to afford to have somebody else prepare his meals. You employ no tailor, but you can browse the internet and instantly order from an almost infinite range of excellent, affordable clothes of cotton, silk, linen, wool and nylon made up for you in factories all over Asia. You have no carriage, but you can buy a ticket which will summon the services of a skilled pilot of a budget airline to fly you to one of hundreds of destinations that Louis never dreamed of seeing. You have no woodcutters to bring you logs for the fire, but the operators of gas rigs in Russia are clamouring to bring you clean central heating. You have no wick-trimming footman, but your light switch gives you the instant and brilliant produce of hardworking people at a grid of distant nuclear power stations. You have no runner to send messages, but even now a repairman is climbing a mobile-phone mast somewhere in the world to make sure it is working properly just in case you need to call that cell. You have no private apothecary, but your local pharmacy supplies you with the handiwork of many thousands of chemists, engineers and logistics experts. You have no government ministers, but diligent reporters are even now standing ready to tell you about a film star’s divorce if you will only switch to their channel or log on to their blogs. My point is that you have far, far more than 498 servants at your immediate beck and call. Of course, unlike the Sun King’s servants, these people work for many other people too, but from your perspective what is the difference? That is the magic that exchange and specialisation have wrought for the human species.

It’s easy to slam phone manufacturers and social media platforms as sexist (and, as we shall see, they are, if often unknowingly), but the reality is that even if they had somehow managed to design an image of a ‘gender neutral’ runner, most of us would still have read that runner as male, because we read most things as male unless they are specifically marked as female.

The Existentially Preoccupied Long Distance Runner Sometimes I like to run so hard and for so long with each mile I can feel the pain of my own awareness, my own heightened consciousness of what ails me, the ills of the world, the limitations of our existence, the losses we must endure, the superficial interactions. Sometimes I like to run so hard and for so long that I can feel all of these feelings seep out of the pours of my own skin, the sweat cleansing my very being, my awareness of beauty heightened, the experience of joy possible, each mile, each minute, ridding me of these feelings, washing away the illusions, showing me the truth. Sometimes I like to run so hard and for so long… until finally I feel free… until finally I AM free…

Looking at you is like looking at the sun breaking on a new day and wishing I could hold onto that moment forever. That’s what I’m going to give you, Charleigh. A million new days where you get to wake up and shine all your light. Shower this world in your beauty because there’s so fuckin’ much of it, it’s a disgrace to keep it hidden. Gonna make you shine, Little Runner. Fuckin’ glow.

By then Prefontaine was universally known as Pre, and he was far more than a phenom; he was an outright superstar. He was the biggest thing to hit the world of American track and field since Jesse Owens. Sportswriters frequently compared him to James Dean, and Mick Jagger, and Runner’s World said the most apt comparison might be Muhammad Ali. He was that kind of swaggery, transformative figure.

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.

As most students of antiquity know, the modern marathon takes its name from the name of a famous battle that the Athenians won over the Persians in 490 B.C. Pheidippides, a Greek soldier and champion runner, volunteered to run the 25 miles from Marathon to Athens to spread the news of the victory. Upon arriving, Pheidippides is reported to have gasped "Rejoice, we conquer!" and then promptly died on the spot.

I've been living in waiting. I must move on. That's why we're here. Grandmamma said that the cream of Society comes here, and if anyone knows anything about his travels or his disappearance, this would be the place to find out about it. "And have you discovered anything?" Adele asked. "The cream," Pippa sighed, "has obviously curdled. We have one more gentleman to speak with, and then we'll move on. This fellow is said to know everyone and everything too or, at least, everything he wants to know. He does favors for his friends as well, Grandfather said. We'll see." "Why don't you employ a Runner?" "That way the whole world will know. This way, only the privileged few do." "And if you find Noel is alive?" Adele asked. "I'll kill him," Pippa said. Her friend's eyes opened wide. "You're joking, of course. Pippa only sighed again.

First of all, word is that the Flare is running rampant through this whole shuck city and that all kinds of corruption is going on to hide it because the ones who are sick are government bigwigs. They’re hiding the virus with the Bliss—it slows down the Flare so people who have it can blend in with everyone else, but the virus keeps spreading. My guess is it’s the same all over the world. There’s just no way to keep that beast out.

Women and girl runners, from Mary Decker to Mary Cane, have been kept small and weak and injury prone, because we have assumed that is what it means to be a woman runner in a man's world. But when we think about how much the smallness, weakness and injuries could be due to the environment women and girls live in, and not their own bodies, then the question becomes, "how can we know for sure what it means to be a woman runner at all?

We were about a mile from school, on a path in the park, when Chirag reached down and took off his shoes, tossing them into the trees beside us. “What are you doing?” I shouted in between breaths. Step, breath. Step, breath. He was a few yards ahead of me. I took advantage of his pause to pass him; I wasn’t about to let him beat me. “There’s a tribe of Indians in Mexico who are the best runners in the world,” he shouted. “They run barefoot for miles and miles and never break a sweat.” “You’re not that kind of Indian,” I shouted back, and Chirag laughed, his golden skin shimmering beneath his sweat. “You should try it, too!” “No way!” I replied without turning around to face him. “The ground is filthy. There could be glass or splinters or something.” “Aw, come on, Maisie,” he cooed, coming up on my left side and getting a few steps ahead of me once more. “I dare you.

Agha, did you hear what Mullah Nasruddin did when his daughter came home and complained that her husband had beaten her?” I could feel him smiling in the dark and a smile of my own formed on my face. There wasn’t an Afghan in the world who didn’t know at least a few jokes about the bumbling mullah. “What?” “He beat her too, then sent her back to tell the husband that Mullah was no fool: If the bastard was going to beat his daughter, then Mullah would beat his wife in return.

Why would the off-world colonists want troublesome, humanlike slaves rather than nice, efficient machines? It's simple. Machines don't suffer. They aren't capable of it. A machine doesn't know when it's being raped. There's no power relationship between you and a machine. That's been the U.N.'s whole pitch about the attractions of the off-world colonies all along. The big human thrill. For a replicant to suffer, to give its owners that whole master-slave energy, it has to have emotions.

The distance runner who accepts the past in the person he is, and sees the future as a promise rather than a threat, is completely and utterly in the present. He is absorbed in his encounter with the everyday world. He is mysteriously reconciling the separations of body and mind, of pain and pleasure, of the conscious and the unconsciou. He is repairing the rent, and healing the wound in the divided self. He has found a way to make the ordinary extraordinary; the commonplace, unique; the everyday, eternal.

The Indian runner ducks have no names, or at least no names they share with us, and are here to represent sheep. They have many of the characteristics of sheep without actually being sheep. They are fabulously stupid. They cannot fly. They gather together and, given the opportunity, dither and fall over each other. They are protected from moisture by a natural oil which permeates their outer covering. A short amount of time spent in their company is enough to make you want to kill them all out of frustration.

Wilt Chamberlain, all seven feet one inch and 275 pounds of him, had no problem running a 50-mile ultra when he was sixty years old after his knees had survived a lifetime of basketball. Hell, a Norwegian sailor named Mensen Ernst barely even remembered what dry land felt like when he came ashore back in 1832, but he still managed to run all the way from Paris to Moscow to win a bet, averaging one hundred thirty miles a day for fourteen days, wearing God only knows what kind of clodhoppers on God only knows what kind of roads.

Deedee pulled away from Trina and turned, ran into the grey wall of the Flat Trans. It swallowed her whole and she was gone. The roar of the Berg filled the air. The building trembled. Bruce arrived at the door, screaming something unintelligible. And then Trina was rushing to Mark. Throwing her arms around his neck. Kissing him. A thousand thoughts flipped through his mind, and he saw her in all of them. Wrestling in the front yard of her house before they were old enough to know anything; saying hi in the school hallway; riding the subtrans; feeling her hand in the darkness after the flares struck; the terror of the tunnels, the rushing waters, the Lincoln Building; waiting out the radiation, stealing the boat, the countless treks across ruined, sweltering land. She'd been there with him through it all. With Alec. Lana. Darnell and the others. And here, at the end of the fight, Trina was in his arms. Monstrous noise and quaking took over the world, but he still heard what she whispered into his ear before the Berg came crashing into the building. "Mark.

To have a goddess like you in his arms and not appreciate it…” He kissed her, unable to resist the lush, succulent mouth so close to his. He put everything he felt into it, so he could wipe out any hurt the Neds of the world had given her. When he broke away, realizing he was treading dangerous ground, she said hoarsely, “You weren’t always so…appreciative. When I said that men enjoyed my company, you said you found that hard to believe.” “What?” he retorted with a scowl. “I never said any such thing.” “Yes, you did, the day that I asked you to investigate my suitors. I remember it clearly.” “There’s no way in hell I ever…” The conversation came back to him suddenly, and he shook his head. “You’re remembering only part, sweeting. You said that men enjoyed your company and considered you easy to talk to. It was the last part I found hard to believe.” “Oh.” She eyed him askance. “Why? You never seem to have trouble talking to me. Or rather, lecturing me.” “It’s either lecture you or stop up your mouth with kisses,” he said dryly. “Talking to you isn’t easy, because every time I’m near you I burn to carry you off to some secluded spot and do any number of wicked things with you.” She blinked, then gazed at him with such softness that at made his chest hurt. “Then why don’t you?” “Because you’re a marquess’s daughter and my employer’s sister.” “What does that signify? You’re an assistant magistrate and a famous Bow Street Runner-“ “And the bastard of nobody knows whom.” “Which merely makes you a fitting companion for a hellion with a reputation for recklessness.” The word companion resonated in his brain. What did she mean by it? Then she pressed a kiss to his jaw, eroding his resistance and his reason, and he knew precisely what she meant. He tried to set her off of him before he lost his mind entirely, but she looped her arms about his neck and wouldn’t let go. “Show me.” “Show you what?” “All the wicked things you want to do with me.” Desire bolted in a fever through his vein. “My God, Celia-“ “I won’t believe a word you’ve said if you don’t.” Her gaze grew troubled. “I don’t think you know what you want. Yesterday you gave me such lovely kisses and caresses and then at the ball you acted like you’d never met me.” “You were with your suitors,” he said hoarsely. “You could have danced with me. You didn’t even ask me for one dance.” Having her on his lap was rousing him to a painful hardness. “Because I knew if I did, I would want…I would need…” She kissed a path down his throat, turning his blood to fire. “Show me,” she whispered, “Show me now what you want. What you need.” “I refuse to ruin you,” he said, half as a caution to himself. “You already have.

And a large man at the end of the table stood up and drank to the memory of Franklin D. Roosevelt. We were beginning to understand the quality of Roosevelt’s memory in the world, and the great sense of tragedy at his death. And I remembered a story that I had heard one time. Within a week of the death of Lincoln, the news of his death had penetrated even to the middle of Africa, sometimes on the drums, and sometimes carried by runners. The news traveled that a world tragedy had taken place. And it seems to us that it does not matter what the Roosevelt-haters think or say, it doesn’t even matter, actually, what Roosevelt was in the flesh. What does matter is that his name is throughout the world a symbol of wisdom, and kindness, and understanding. In the minds of little people all over the world he has ceased to be a man and has become a principle. And those men who attack him now, and attack his memory, do not hurt his name at all, but simply define themselves as the mean, the greedy, the selfish, and the stupid. Roosevelt’s name is far beyond the reach of small minds and dirty hands

Robin’s voice on the executive chef’s line came to signify tongue. She didn’t say more than a word or two before Denise tuned out. Robin’s tongue and lips continued to form the instructions demanded by the day’s exigencies, but in Denise’s ear they were already speaking that other language of up and down and round and round that her body intuitively understood and autonomously obeyed; sometimes she melted so hard at the sound of this voice that her abdomen caved in and she doubled over; for the next hour-plus there was nothing in the world but tongue, no inventory or buttered pheasants or unpaid purveyors; she left the Generator in a buzzing hypnotized state of poor reflexes, the volume of the world’s noise lowered to near zero, other drivers luckily obeying basic traffic laws. Her car was like a tongue gliding down the melty asphalt streets, her feet like twin tongues licking pavement, the front door of the house on Panama Street like a mouth that swallowed her, the Persian runner in the hall outside the master bedroom like a tongue beckoning, the bed in its cloak of comforter and pillows a big soft tongue begging to be depressed, and then.

Vigil could smell the apocalypse coming, and he’d tried hard to warn his runners. “There are two goddesses in your heart,” he told them. “The Goddess of Wisdom and the Goddess of Wealth. Everyone thinks they need to get wealth first, and wisdom will come. So they concern themselves with chasing money. But they have it backwards. You have to give your heart to the Goddess of Wisdom, give her all your love and attention, and the Goddess of Wealth will become jealous, and follow you.” Ask nothing from your running, in other words, and you’ll get more than you ever imagined. Vigil

without flaw, trying to calculate his surroundings and predicament. Knowledge flooded his thoughts, facts and images, memories and details of the world and how it works. He pictured snow on trees, running down a leaf-strewn road, eating a hamburger, the moon casting a pale glow on a grassy meadow, swimming in a lake, a busy city square with hundreds of people bustling about their business. And yet he didn’t know where he came from, or how he’d gotten inside the dark lift, or who his parents were. He didn’t even know his last name. Images of people flashed across his mind, but there was no recognition, their faces replaced with haunted smears of color. He couldn’t think of one person he knew, or recall a single conversation. The room continued its ascent, swaying; Thomas grew immune to the ceaseless rattling of the chains that pulled him upward. A long time passed. Minutes stretched into hours, although it was impossible to know for sure because every second seemed an eternity. No. He was smarter than that. Trusting his instincts, he knew he’d been moving for roughly half an hour. Strangely enough, he felt his fear whisked away like a swarm of gnats caught in the wind, replaced by an intense

ONE OF the biggest differences between the training of world-class runners and that of recreational runners is how slowly we elites sometimes run. Let me explain. Let’s say it’s the day after a hard workout. A typical recovery run for me is 10 miles in 65 minutes. A 10-miler at an average of 6:30 per mile might sound fast, but consider it in perspective. That’s almost 2 minutes per mile slower than I can run for a half-marathon and more than 90 seconds per mile slower than my marathon race pace. For someone who runs a 3:30 marathon, which is about 8 minutes per mile, that would be like averaging a 9:30 pace on a recovery day.

Increasingly, a ‘racist’ is someone who dares to even notice general patterns of difference among groups of different continental origins. I stress the terms ‘general patterns’ and ‘different continental origins’ because a semantic trick some people play is to insist that no race is ‘pure’ and therefore race is a meaningless term, but I’ve never suggested this ‘purity’ concept and I’m not sure that anyone has. To deny that Kenyans are generally better long-distance runners than Samoans, or that Japanese students consistently score higher than Australian aborigines on intelligence tests, or that Germans have contributed more to science than Guatemalans, is to deny reality.

Fatigue has built up after all this training, and I can’t seem to run very fast. As I’m leisurely jogging along the Charles River, girls who look to be new Harvard freshmen keep on passing me. Most of these girls are small, slim, have on maroon Harvard-logo outfits, blond hair in a ponytail, and brand-new iPods, and they run like the wind. You can definitely feel a sort of aggressive challenge emanating from them. They seem to be used to passing people, and probably not used to being passed. They all look so bright, so healthy, attractive, and serious, brimming with self-confidence. With their long strides and strong, sharp kicks, it’s easy to see that they’re typical mid-distance runners, unsuited for long-distance running. They’re more mentally cut out for brief runs at high speed. Compared to them I’m pretty used to losing. There are plenty of things in this world that are way beyond me, plenty of opponents I can never beat. Not to brag, but these girls probably don’t know as much as I do about pain. And, quite naturally, there might not be a need for them to know it. These random thoughts come to me as I watch their proud ponytails swinging back and forth, their aggressive strides. Keeping to my own leisurely pace, I continue my run down along the Charles. Have I ever had such luminous days in my own life? Perhaps a few. But even if I had a long ponytail back then, I doubt if it would have swung so proudly as these girls’ ponytails do. And my legs wouldn’t have kicked the ground as cleanly and as powerfully as theirs. Maybe that’s only to be expected. These girls are, after all, brand-new students at the one and only Harvard University. Still, it’s pretty wonderful to watch these pretty girls run. As I do, I’m struck by an obvious thought: One generation takes over from the next. This is how things are handed over in this world, so I don’t feel so bad if they pass me. These girls have their own pace, their own sense of time. And I have my own pace, my own sense of time. The two are completely different, but that’s the way it should be.

But Eugene was untroubled by thought of a goal. He was mad with such ecstasy as he had never known. He was a centaur, moon-eyed and wild of name, torn apart with hunger for the golden world. He became at times almost incapable of coherent speech. While talking with people, he would whinny suddenly into their startled faces, and leap away, his face contorted with an idiot joy. He would hurl himself squealing through the streets and along the paths, touched with the ecstasy of a thousand unspoken desires. The world lay before him for his picking—full of opulent cities, golden vintages, glorious triumphs, lovely women, full of a thousand unmet and magnificent possibilities. Nothing was dull or tarnished. The strange enchanted coasts were unvisited. He was young and he could never die. He went back to Pulpit Hill for two or three days of delightful loneliness in the deserted college. He prowled through the empty campus at midnight under the great moons of the late rich Spring; he breathed the thousand rich odours of tree and grass and flower, of the opulent and seductive South; and he felt a delicious sadness when he thought of his departure, and saw there in the moon the thousand phantom shapes of the boys he had known who would come no more. He still loitered, although his baggage had been packed for days. With a desperate pain, he faced departure from that Arcadian wilderness where he had known so much joy. At night he roamed the deserted campus, talking quietly until morning with a handful of students who lingered strangely, as he did, among the ghostly buildings, among the phantoms of lost boys. He could not face a final departure. He said he would return early in autumn for a few days, and at least once a year thereafter. Then one hot morning, on sudden impulse, he left. As the car that was taking him to Exeter roared down the winding street, under the hot green leafiness of June, he heard, as from the sea-depth of a dream, far-faint, the mellow booming of the campus bell. And suddenly it seemed to him that all the beaten walks were thudding with the footfalls of lost boys, himself among them, running for their class. Then, as he listened, the far bell died away, and the phantom runners thudded into oblivion. The car roared up across the lip of the hill, and drove steeply down into the hot parched countryside below. As the lost world faded from his sight, Eugene gave a great cry of pain and sadness, for he knew that the elfin door had closed behind him, and that he would never come back again. He saw the vast rich body of the hills, lush with billowing greenery, ripe-bosomed, dappled by far-floating cloudshadows. But it was, he knew, the end. Far-forested, the horn-note wound. He was wild with the hunger for release: the vast champaign of earth stretched out for him its limitless seduction. It was the end, the end. It was the beginning of the voyage, the quest of new lands. Gant was dead. Gant was living, death-in-life. In

You can definitely feel a sort of aggressive challenge emanating from them. They seem to be used to passing people, and probably not used to being passed. They all look so bright, so healthy, attractive, and serious, brimming with self-confidence. With their long strides and strong, sharp kicks, it’s easy to see that they’re typical mid-distance runners, unsuited for long-distance running. They’re more mentally cut out for brief runs at high speed. Compared to them I’m pretty used to losing. There are plenty of things in this world that are way beyond me, plenty of opponents I can never beat. Not to brag, but these girls probably don’t know as much as I do about pain. And, quite naturally, there might not be a need for them to know it.

A learned society of our day, no doubt with the loftiest of intentions, has proposed the question, “Which people, in history, might have been the happiest?” If I properly understand the question, and if it is not altogether beyond the scope of a human answer, I can think of nothing to say except that at a certain time and under certain circumstances every people must have experienced such a moment or else it never was [a people]. Then again, human nature is no vessel for an absolute, independent, immutable happiness, as defined by the philosopher; rather, she everywhere draws as much happiness towards herself as she can: a supple clay that will conform to the most different situations, needs, and depressions. Even the image of happiness changes with every condition and location (for what is it ever but the sum of “the satisfaction of desire, the fulfillment of purpose, and the gentle overcoming of needs,” all of which are shaped by land, time, and place?). Basically, then, all comparison becomes futile. As soon as the inner meaning of happiness, the inclination has changed; as soon as external opportunities and needs develop and solidify the other meaning—who could compare the different satisfaction of different meanings in different worlds? Who could compare the shepherd and father of the Orient, the ploughman and the artisan, the seaman, runner, conqueror of the world? It is not the laurel wreath that matters, nor the sight of the blessed flock, neither the merchant vessels nor the conquered armies’ standards—but the soul that needed this, strove for it, finally attained it and wanted to attain nothing else. Every nation has its center of happiness within itself, as every ball has its center of gravity!

I’m not—I’m not talking about myself.” “Oh, darling,” her mother said, the sharp planes of her face softening. “We’re all talking about ourselves. Always, because the only way we see the world is through our own eyes. The way you’ve always seen Anthony in Will, and you’re so scared that he’s his dad all over again. That he’s weak at the core after all, and that he’ll disgrace you in the end, and desert you, too. This is all just one more way you’re afraid he’s done it. But he hasn’t, and he won’t, because he’s not his dad. He’s got you in him, too. He’s got the mum who stayed, and stuck. That’s why he’ll never do a runner on the people he loves, no matter how heavy the burden gets. He’ll take care of you until you’re in your grave, and he’ll take care of his brother and sisters as well. Because he’s strong to the core, and solid to the bone. Because he’s a good man.

The system used to elect members of the legislatures of most countries in the British political tradition is that each district (or ‘constituency’) in the country is entitled to one seat in the legislature, and that seat goes to the candidate with the largest number of votes in that district. This is called the plurality voting system (‘plurality’ meaning ‘largest number of votes’) – often called the ‘first-past-the-post’ system, because there is no prize for any runner-up, and no second round of voting (both of which feature in other electoral systems for the sake of increasing the proportionality of the outcomes). Plurality voting typically ‘over-represents’ the two largest parties, compared with the proportion of votes they receive. Moreover, it is not guaranteed to avoid the population paradox, and is even capable of bringing one party to power when another has received far more votes in total.

Running is a form of escapism; few runners would deny that. The metaphor of running away from one’s problems is hardly allegory, and it was certainly the case for me. Though why is that such a bad thing? Having a release valve allows the buildup of toxic fumes to be vented periodically. On untold occasions I ran out the door with the weight of the world on my shoulders and in the course of 5 or 6 strenuous miles these problems somehow dissipated into the ether. Sometimes I just wanted to keep going, to leave the world behind and just run. But that would be irresponsible. Yeah, it would, which made the idea all the more appealing. Odysseus ventured to faraway lands, yet returned home to his responsibilities and familial duties in due course a renewed man. Running could be at once irresponsible and responsible in this regard, a way to escape the madness of modernity and reemerge refreshed and washed clean.

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,

They’re at the gates now, and there’s no lock on them that Parks can see, but they don’t open. Used to be electric, obviously, but bygones are bygones and in the brave new post-mortem world that just means they don’t bloody work. “Over!” he yells. “Up and over!” Which is easily said. A head-high rampart of ornamental ironwork with functional spear points on top says different. They try, all the same. Parks leaves them to it, turns his back to them and goes on firing. The up side is that now he can be indiscriminate. Set to full auto and aim low. Cut the hungries’ legs out from under them, turning the front-runners into trip hazards to slow the ones behind. The down side is that more and more of them keep coming. The noise is like a dinner bell. Hungries are crowding into the green space from the streets on every side, at what you’d have to call a dead run. There’s no limit to their numbers, and there is a limit to his ammo. Which

RUNNING THE RACE The marathon is one of the most strenuous athletic events in sport. The Boston Marathon attracts the best runners in the world. The winner is automatically placed among the great athletes of our time. In the spring of 1980, Rosie Ruiz was the first woman to cross the finish line. She had the laurel wreath placed on her head in a blaze of lights and cheering. She was completely unknown in the world of running. An incredible feat! Her first race a victory in the prestigious Boston Marathon! Then someone noticed her legs—loose flesh, cellulite. Questions were asked. No one had seen her along the 26.2-mile course. The truth came out: she had jumped into the race during the last mile. There was immediate and widespread interest in Rosie. Why would she do that when it was certain that she would be found out? Athletic performance cannot be faked. But she never admitted her fraud. She repeatedly said that she would run another marathon to validate her ability. Somehow she never did. People interviewed her, searching for a clue to her personality. One interviewer concluded that she really believed that she had run the complete Boston Marathon and won. She was analyzed as a sociopath. She lied convincingly and naturally with no sense of conscience, no sense of reality in terms of right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable behavior. She appeared bright, normal and intelligent. But there was no moral sense to give coherence to her social actions. In reading about Rosie I thought of all the people I know who want to get in on the finish but who cleverly arrange not to run the race. They appear in church on Sunday wreathed in smiles, entering into the celebration, but there is no personal life that leads up to it or out from it. Occasionally they engage in spectacular acts of love and compassion in public. We are impressed, but surprised, for they were never known to do that before.

Cotter thinks he sees a path to the turnstile on the right. He drains himself of everything he does not need to make the jump. Some are still jumping, some are thinking about it, some need a haircut, some have girlfriends in woolly sweaters and the rest have landed in the ruck and are trying to get up and scatter. A couple of stadium cops are rumbling down the ramp. Cotter sheds these elements as they appear, sheds a thousand waves of information hitting on his skin. His gaze is trained on the iron bars projected from the post. He picks up speed and seems to lose his gangliness, the slouchy funk of hormones and unbelonging and all the stammering things that seal his adolescence. He is just a running boy, a half-seen figure from the streets, but the way running reveals some clue to being, the way a runner bares himself to consciousness, this is how the dark-skinned kid seems to open to the world, how the bloodrush of a dozen strides brings him into eloquence.

World-class runners, of course, want to outdo their closest rivals, but for your average, everyday runner, individual rivalry isn't a major issue. I'm sure there are garden-variety runners whose desire to beat a particular rival spurs them on to train harder. But what happens if their rival, for whatever reason, drops out of the competition? Their motivation for running would disappear or at least diminish, and it'd be hard for them to remain runners for long. Most ordinary runners are motivated by an individual goal, more than anything: namely, a time they want to beat. As long as he can beat that time, a runner will feel he's accomplished what he set out to do, and if he can't then he'll feel he hasn't. Even if he doesn't break the time he'd hoped for, as long as he has the sense of satisfaction at having done his very best-- and, possibly, having made some significant discovery about himself in the process-- then that in itself is an accomplishment, a positive feeling he can carry over to the next race.

I HAS RITTEN A BOOK AND IT IS SO EXCITING NOBODY CAN PUT IT DOWN. AS SOON AS YOU HAS RED THE FIRST LINE YOU IS SO HOOKED ON IT YOU CANNOT STOP UNTIL THE LAST PAGE. IN ALL THE CITIES PEEPLE IS WALKING IN THE STREETS BUMPING INTO EACH OTHER BECAUSE THEIR FACES IS BURIED IN MY BOOK AND DENTISTS IS READING IT AND TRYING TO FILL TEETHS AT THE SAME TIME BUT NOBODY MINDS BECAUSE THEY IS ALL READING IT TOO IN THE DENTIST’S CHAIR. DRIVERS IS READING IT WHILE DRIVING AND CARS IS CRASHING ALL OVER THE COUNTRY. BRAIN SURGEONS IS READING IT WHILE THEY IS OPERATING ON BRAINS AND AIRLINE PILOTS IS READING IT AND GOING TO TIMBUCTOO INSTEAD OF LONDON. FOOTBALL PLAYERS IS READING IT ON THE FIELD BECAUSE THEY CAN’T PUT IT DOWN AND SO IS OLIMPICK RUNNERS WHILE THEY IS RUNNING. EVERYBODY HAS TO SEE WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN NEXT IN MY BOOK AND WHEN I WAKE UP I IS STILL TINGLING WITH EXCITEMENT AT BEING THE GREATEST RITER THE WORLD HAS EVER KNOWN UNTIL MY MUMMY COMES IN AND SAYS I WAS LOOKING AT YOUR ENGLISH EXERCISE BOOK LAST NITE AND REALLY YOUR SPELLING IS ATROSHUS SO IS YOUR PUNTULASHON.

It was on this day, during this terrible and wonderful run, that a thought occurred to me, a thought which has never left me" I've always considered the question to be. "Why am I alive? Why am I here? What’s the point of me?? And to that I say WHO CARES! FORGET THE WHY. YOU ARE IN A RAGING FOREST FULL OF BEAUTY AND AGONY AND MAGICAL GRAPEY BEVERAGES AND LIGHTNING STORMS AND DEMON BEES. THIS IS BETTER THAN THE WHY. I run because I seek that clarity. Maybe it’s superficial. Maybe its’s just adrenaline and endorphins and serotine flooding my brain. But I don’t care. I run very fast because I desperately want to stand very still. I run to seek a void. The world around me is so very, very loud. It begs me to slow down, to sit down, to lie down. And the buzzing of the world is nothing compared to the noise inside my head. I’m an introspective person, and sometimes I think too much, about my job and about my life. I feed an army of pointless, bantering demons. But when I run, the world grows quiet. Demons are forgotten, Krakens are slain, and Blerches are silenced. THE END.

The lady was all business. “Come,” she said, extending a hand. The boy looked up at his mother. He had no reason to hold back the tears, and he didn’t. They flowed down his face freely. He jumped to his feet and hugged her, shattering her heart a million times over. She squeezed him back. “You’re going to do great things for this world,” she whispered, somehow keeping herself under control. “You’re going to make me so proud. I love you, sweet boy. I love you so much and don’t you ever forget it.” His only response was to sob into her shoulder. And that said everything. Finally it had to end. “I’m very sorry,” the lady in the dark suit and mask said. “But we have a tight schedule. Truly, I’m sorry.” “Go on now,” the mother said to her son. “Go on, and be brave.” He pulled back, his face wet, his eyes red. A strength seemed to come over him and he nodded, helping her believe he’d be okay in the end. He was strong, this one. The boy turned away, never to look at her again. He walked to the door and went through it with no hesitation. No glance back, no complaints. “Thank you again,” the visiting lady said. She followed the boy out.

But then something unexpected happened. Donald Trump, a real estate mogul and television celebrity who did not need the Koch donor network’s money to run, who seemed to have little grasp of the goals of this movement, entered the race. More than that, to get ahead, Trump was able to successfully mock the candidates they had already cowed as “puppets.” And he offered a different economic vision. He loved capitalism, to be sure, but he was not a libertarian by any stretch. Like Bill Clinton before him, he claimed to feel his audience’s pain. He promised to stanch it with curbs on the very agenda the party’s front-runners were promoting: no more free-trade deals that shuttered American factories, no cuts to Social Security or Medicare, and no more penny-pinching while the nation’s infrastructure crumbled. He went so far as to pledge to build a costly wall to stop immigrants from coming to take the jobs U.S. companies offered them because they could hire desperate, rightless workers for less. He said and did a lot more, too, much that was ugly and incendiary. And in November, he shocked the world by winning the Electoral College vote.

As Joss showed up to start work on the new season, Barr gathered everyone on staff and made a speech about how the tabloids were obsessed with her and had sources among the crew feeding them details of her personal life. Joss, who had heard about tabloid drama and the staff conflicts, anticipated a speech that would bring everybody closer: “It’s us against the world, and dammit, we’ve got good work to do here, let’s all get it done.” Instead, Roseanne told the writers they had better keep their mouths shut or they would all be fired. It was a plot twist that he wasn’t expecting. “It made me realize … that every time somebody opens their mouth they have an opportunity to do one of two things— connect or divide. Some people inherently divide, and some people inherently connect,” Joss said. “Connecting is the most important thing, and actually an easy thing to do. I try to make a connection with someone every time I talk to them, even if I’m firing them…. People can be treated with respect. That is one of the most important things a show runner can do, is make everybody understand that we’re all involved, that we’re all on the same level.

Let's dispense with the nonsense, Victoria. This isn't a question of suitability, yours or his. You're perfectly capable of accustoming yourself to new circumstances.... and marrying a man of good fortune, though untitled, is not exactly a lordship." Vivien rolled her eyes and sighed. "It is so like you to analyze a situation until you've made it ten times more complicated than it really is! Just as Father used to do." "Father was a wonderful man," Victoria said, stiffening. "Yes... a wonderful, virtuous, lonely martyr. After Mama left him, Father retreated into his shell and hid from the world. And you stayed with him and tried to atone for everything that had happened by becoming exactly like him. You've been living in this same damned cottage, poring over the same bloody books. It's morbid, I tell you." "You don't understand-" Victoria began hotly. "Don't I?" Vivien interrupted. "I understand your fears better than you do. It's always been safer for you to hide here alone than take the chance of loving someone and have them leave you. *That's* what your real worry is. Mama abandoned you, and now you expect the same of anyone else you might love.

The human collective knows far more today than did the ancient bands. But at the individual level, ancient foragers were the most knowledgeable and skilful people in history. There is some evidence that the size of the average Sapiens brain has actually decreased since the age of foraging.5 Survival in that era required superb mental abilities from everyone. When agriculture and industry came along people could increasingly rely on the skills of others for survival, and new ‘niches for imbeciles’ were opened up. You could survive and pass your unremarkable genes to the next generation by working as a water carrier or an assembly-line worker. Foragers mastered not only the surrounding world of animals, plants and objects, but also the internal world of their own bodies and senses. They listened to the slightest movement in the grass to learn whether a snake might be lurking there. They carefully observed the foliage of trees in order to discover fruits, beehives and bird nests. They moved with a minimum of effort and noise, and knew how to sit, walk and run in the most agile and efficient manner. Varied and constant use of their bodies made them as fit as marathon runners. They had physical dexterity that people today are unable to achieve even after years of practising yoga or t’ai chi.

Hitler derived several things from his experience and achievements in World War I, without which his rise to power in 1933 would have been at the least problematical, and at the most inconceivable. Hitler survived the war as a combat soldier—a rifle carrier—in a frontline infantry regiment. The achievement was an extraordinary one based on some combination of near-miraculous luck and combat skill. The interpretive fussing over whether or not Hitler was a combat soldier because he spent most of the war in the part of the regiment described as regimental headquarters can be laid to rest as follows: Any soldier in an infantry regiment on an active front in the west in World War I must be considered to have been a combat soldier. Hitler’s authorized regimental weapon was the Mauser boltaction, magazine-fed rifle. This gives a basic idea of what Hitler could be called upon to do in his assignment at the front. As a regimental runner, he carried messages to the battalions and line companies of the regiment, and the more important ones had to be delivered under outrageously dangerous circumstances involving movement through artillery fire and, particularly later in the war, poison gas and the omnipresent rifle fire of the skilled British sniper detachments. --Hitler: Beyond Evil and Tyranny, p. 96

Yes, but what about the firemen, then?” asked Montag. “Ah.” Beatty leaned forward in the faint mist of smoke from his pipe. “What more easily explained and natural? With school turning out more runners, jumpers, racers, tinkerers, grabbers, snatchers, fliers, and swimmers instead of examiners, critics, knowers, and imaginative creators, the word ‘intellectual,’ of course, became the swear word it deserved to be. You always dread the unfamiliar. Surely you remember the boy in your own school class who was exceptionally ‘bright,’ did most of the reciting and answering while the others sat like so many leaden idols, hating him. And wasn’t it this bright boy you selected for beatings and tortures after hours? Of course it was. We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man’s mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man? Me? I won’t stomach them for a minute. And so when houses were finally fireproofed completely, all over the world (you were correct in your assumption the other night) there was no longer need of firemen for the old purposes. They were given the new job, as custodians of our peace of mind, the focus of our understandable and rightful dread of being inferior; official censors, judges, and executors. That’s you, Montag, and that’s me.

The moment before the gun goes off is always the most silent. Your world is quiet, but it is not calm. The runners around you bounce and flex and relax, flex and relax. They slap their faces for motivation, they look to the sky and mumble prayers to God. The coaches shout instructions and the teammates cheer as do the fans in the stands, but you cannot hear because you are somewhere else, somewhere deep inside, preparing your body to deal with the coming pain, the breath sucked from you, your limbs on fire and the voices that won't let you stop. They say keep moving, it gets better, it will be better if you can only break through this pain. They say there's another life after this torture, a new level, just keep breathing. Then the gunshot and your body no longer belongs to you. Yes, you are there, you are present but you are no longer in control. Whatever happens from this point happens and all you can do, all you must do now is breathe, keep breathing, don't lose your nerve, don't choke, no matter how much it hurts, don't stop breathing otherwise it will all be over before it's time. They cheer for me. I can't breathe. Harvard isn't going to know what hit them, I hear. I can't breathe. We are the champions, I hear, we are the champions, they sing around me. I can't breathe. Your personal best by a long shot. That's Coach Erickson's voice. That's my boy. It's my father. It's like I'm dying, trying to hold on. My body says oh no, and my knees buckle but so many arms are around me, they hold me up. The voices they say breathe, keep breathing. They bring me water, they bring me something sweet and then they lay me down in the soft grass where I feel the blades against my tingling skin.

Hitler initially served in the List Regiment engaged in a violent four-day battle near Ypres, in Belgian Flanders, with elite British professional soldiers of the initial elements of the British Expeditionary Force. Hitler thereby served as a combat infantryman in one of the most intense engagements of the opening phase of World War I. The List Regiment was temporarily destroyed as an offensive force by suffering such severe casualty rates (killed, wounded, missing, and captured) that it lost approximately 70 percent of its initial strength of around 3,600 men. A bullet tore off Hitler’s right sleeve in the first day of combat, and in the “batch” of men with which he originally advanced, every one fell dead or wounded, leaving him to survive as if through a miracle. On November 9, 1914, about a week after the ending of the great battle, Hitler was reassigned as a dispatch runner to regimental headquarters. Shortly thereafter, he was awarded the Iron Cross Second Class. On about November 14, 1914, the new regimental commander, Lieutenant Colonel Philipp Engelhardt, accompanied by Hitler and another dispatch runner, moved forward into terrain of uncertain ownership. Engelhardt hoped to see for himself the regiment’s tactical situation. When Engelhardt came under aimed enemy smallarms fire, Hitler and the unnamed comrade placed their bodies between their commander and the enemy fire, determined to keep him alive. The two enlisted men, who were veterans of the earlier great four-day battle around Ypres, were doubtlessly affected by the death of the regiment’s first commander in that fight and were dedicated to keeping his replacement alive. Engelhardt was suitably impressed and proposed Hitler for the Iron Cross Second Class, which he was awarded on December 2. Hitler’s performance was exemplary, and he began to fit into the world around him and establish the image of a combat soldier tough enough to demand the respect of anyone in right wing, Freikorps-style politics after the war. -- Hitler: Beyond Evil and Tyranny, p. 88

Would that the structure brave, the manifold music I build, Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their work, Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as when Solomon willed Armies of angels that soar, legions of demons that lurk, Man, brute, reptile, fly,—alien of end and of aim, Adverse, each from the other heaven-high, hell-deep removed,— Should rush into sight at once as he named the ineffable Name, And pile him a palace straight, to pleasure the princess he loved! Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful building of mine, This which my keys in a crowd pressed and importuned to raise! Ah, one and all, how they helped, would dispart now and now combine, Zealous to hasten the work, heighten their master his praise! And one would bury his brow with a blind plunge down to hell, Burrow awhile and build, broad on the roots of things, Then up again swim into sight, having based me my palace well, Founded it, fearless of flame, flat on the nether springs. And another would mount and march, like the excellent minion he was, Ay, another and yet another, one crowd but with many a crest, Raising my rampired walls of gold as transparent as glass, Eager to do and die, yield each his place to the rest: For higher still and higher (as a runner tips with fire, When a great illumination surprises a festal night— Outlining round and round Rome's dome from space to spire) Up, the pinnacled glory reached, and the pride of my soul was in sight. In sight? Not half! for it seemed, it was certain, to match man's birth, Nature in turn conceived, obeying an impulse as I; And the emulous heaven yearned down, made effort to reach the earth, As the earth had done her best, in my passion, to scale the sky: Novel splendours burst forth, grew familiar and dwelt with mine, Not a point nor peak but found and fixed its wandering star; Meteor-moons, balls of blaze: and they did not pale nor pine, For earth had attained to heaven, there was no more near nor far. Nay more; for there wanted not who walked in the glare and glow, Presences plain in the place; or, fresh from the Protoplast, Furnished for ages to come, when a kindlier wind should blow, Lured now to begin and live, in a house to their liking at last; Or else the wonderful Dead who have passed through the body and gone, But were back once more to breathe in an old world worth their new: What never had been, was now; what was, as it shall be anon;

Now, then,” he said, returning to the head of the table, “I think you should know that Gran’s original requirement is still in place. The four of you must marry or she will disinherit the lot of us. I’ve done my part. So I suggest that while Maria and I are in America, you four start looking for mates.” It took a second for that to sink in. Minerva exploded first. “That isn’t fair! Gran, I’m sure you’ll have your heir from Oliver and Maria in no time, given the hours they spend up there in the master bedchamber. Why in heaven’s name must you continue this farce?” “I asked her to continue it,” Oliver said. When his siblings gaped at him, he added, “Gran is right-it’s time that we take our place in the world as more than hellions. We’ve been sleepwalking too long, locked into the past, unable to live fruitful lives. Now that Maria has awakened me, I want to wake you up, too. I want you to stop boxing at shadows and hiding in the dark from the scandal of our parents’ deaths. I want you to find what I’ve found-love.” He gazed at Maria, who cast him an encouraging smile. They’d both agreed that this might be the only way to force his siblings awake. “Speak for yourself,” Minerva answered. “I’m perfectly fine. You’re just using that nonsense as an excuse for joining up with Gran to ruin our lives.” She glanced resentfully at Maria. “Is this the thanks we get for pushing him into your arms?” “Pushing me into her arms?” Oliver echoed. “All that making you jealous and keeping you from her-“ Gabe began. “And lying to you about her inheritance,” Jarret added. “Though that didn’t work out quite as planned.” “You wouldn’t even be together if not for us,” Celia said. “I suspect my wife would beg to differ,” Oliver drawled. “But that’s neither here nor there. Rail at me all you want, but Gran’s deadline is still in place. You have ten months to marry.” He cast them a thin smile. “Given how difficult that may prove, however, I’ve hired someone to help you.” He turned to the door. “Mr. Pinter? Would you step inside, please?” The Bow Street Runner walked in, looking uneasy at facing the entire cadre of scandalous Sharpes. “Mr. Pinter has agreed to help you by researching the backgrounds of your potential spouses. I know it can be difficult, especially for you girls, to sort the legitimate suitors from the fortune hunters.” He knew that firsthand. “So Mr. Pinter will investigate anyone who sparks your interest. That should make the entire process move more quickly.” “And cold-bloodedly,” Celia muttered under her breath. Pinter arched an eyebrow but said nothing.

Waking up begins with saying am and now. That which has awoken then lies for a while staring up at the ceiling and down into itself until it has recognized I, and therefore deduced I am, I am now. Here comes next, and is at least negatively reassuring; because here, this morning, is where it has expected to find itself: what’s called at home. But now isn't simply now. Now is also a cold reminder: one whole day later than yesterday, one year later than last year. Every now is labeled with its date, rendering all past nows obsolete, until--later or sooner-- perhaps--no, not perhaps--quite certainly: it will come. Fear tweaks the vagus nerve. A sickish shrinking from what waits, somewhere out there, dead ahead. But meanwhile the cortex, that grim disciplinarian, has taken its place at the central controls and has been testing them, one after another: the legs stretch, the lower back is arched, the fingers clench and relax. And now, over the entire intercommunication system, is issued the first general order of the day: UP. Obediently the body levers itself out of bed--wincing from twinges in the arthritic thumbs and the left knee, mildly nauseated by the pylorus in a state of spasm--and shambles naked into the bathroom, where its bladder is emptied and it is weighed: still a bit over 150 pounds, in spite of all that toiling at the gym! Then to the mirror. What it sees there isn’t much a face as the expression of a predicament. Here’s what it has done to itself, here’s the mess it has somehow managed to get itself into the during its fifty-eight years; expressed in terms of a dull, harassed stare, a coarsened nose, a mouth dragged down by the corners into a grimace as if at the sourness of its own toxins, cheeks sagging from their anchors of muscle, a throat hanging limp in tiny wrinkled folds. The harassed look is that of a desperately tired swimmer or runner; yet there is no question of stopping. The creature we are watching will struggle on and on until it drops. Not because it is heroic. It can imagine no alternative. Staring and staring into the mirror, it sees many faces within its face—the face of the child, the boy, the young man, the not-so-young man—all present still, preserved like fossils on superimposed layers, and, like fossils, dead. Their message to this live dying creature is: Look at us—we have died—what is there to be afraid of? It answers them: But that happened so gradually, so easily. I’m afraid of being rushed. It stares and stares. Its lips part. It struggles to breathe through its mouth. Until the cortex orders it impatiently to wash, to shave, to brush its hair. Its nakedness has to be covered. It must be dressed up in the clothes because it is going outside, into the world of the other people; and these others must be able to identify it. Its behavior must be acceptable to them. Obediently, it washes, shaves, brushes its hair, for it accepts its responsibilities to the others. It is even glad that it has its place among them. It knows what is expected of it. It knows its name. It is called George.

The Sun King had dinner each night alone. He chose from forty dishes, served on gold and silver plate. It took a staggering 498 people to prepare each meal. He was rich because he consumed the work of other people, mainly in the form of their services. He was rich because other people did things for him. At that time, the average French family would have prepared and consumed its own meals as well as paid tax to support his servants in the palace. So it is not hard to conclude that Louis XIV was rich because others were poor. But what about today? Consider that you are an average person, say a woman of 35, living in, for the sake of argument, Paris and earning the median wage, with a working husband and two children. You are far from poor, but in relative terms, you are immeasurably poorer than Louis was. Where he was the richest of the rich in the world’s richest city, you have no servants, no palace, no carriage, no kingdom. As you toil home from work on the crowded Metro, stopping at the shop on the way to buy a ready meal for four, you might be thinking that Louis XIV’s dining arrangements were way beyond your reach. And yet consider this. The cornucopia that greets you as you enter the supermarket dwarfs anything that Louis XIV ever experienced (and it is probably less likely to contain salmonella). You can buy a fresh, frozen, tinned, smoked or pre-prepared meal made with beef, chicken, pork, lamb, fish, prawns, scallops, eggs, potatoes, beans, carrots, cabbage, aubergine, kumquats, celeriac, okra, seven kinds of lettuce, cooked in olive, walnut, sunflower or peanut oil and flavoured with cilantro, turmeric, basil or rosemary ... You may have no chefs, but you can decide on a whim to choose between scores of nearby bistros, or Italian, Chinese, Japanese or Indian restaurants, in each of which a team of skilled chefs is waiting to serve your family at less than an hour’s notice. Think of this: never before this generation has the average person been able to afford to have somebody else prepare his meals. You employ no tailor, but you can browse the internet and instantly order from an almost infinite range of excellent, affordable clothes of cotton, silk, linen, wool and nylon made up for you in factories all over Asia. You have no carriage, but you can buy a ticket which will summon the services of a skilled pilot of a budget airline to fly you to one of hundreds of destinations that Louis never dreamed of seeing. You have no woodcutters to bring you logs for the fire, but the operators of gas rigs in Russia are clamouring to bring you clean central heating. You have no wick-trimming footman, but your light switch gives you the instant and brilliant produce of hardworking people at a grid of distant nuclear power stations. You have no runner to send messages, but even now a repairman is climbing a mobile-phone mast somewhere in the world to make sure it is working properly just in case you need to call that cell. You have no private apothecary, but your local pharmacy supplies you with the handiwork of many thousands of chemists, engineers and logistics experts. You have no government ministers, but diligent reporters are even now standing ready to tell you about a film star’s divorce if you will only switch to their channel or log on to their blogs. My point is that you have far, far more than 498 servants at your immediate beck and call. Of course, unlike the Sun King’s servants, these people work for many other people too, but from your perspective what is the difference? That is the magic that exchange and specialisation have wrought for the human species.

Maybe Ron Clarke wasn’t being poetic in his description of Zatopek—maybe his expert eye was clinically precise: His love of life shone through every movement. Yes! Love of life! Exactly! That’s what got Vigil’s heart thumping when he saw Juan and Martimano scramble happy-go-luckily up that dirt hill. He’d found his Natural Born Runner.

It’s tempting to think that the male bias that is embedded in language is simply a relic of more regressive times, but the evidence does not point that way. The world’s ‘fastest-growing language’,34 used by more than 90% of the world’s online population, is emoji.35 This language originated in Japan in the 1980s and women are its heaviest users:36 78% of women versus 60% of men frequently use emoji.37 And yet, until 2016, the world of emojis was curiously male. The emojis we have on our smartphones are chosen by the rather grand-sounding ‘Unicode Consortium’, a Silicon Valley-based group of organisations that work together to ensure universal, international software standards. If Unicode decides a particular emoji (say ‘spy’) should be added to the current stable, they will decide on the code that should be used. Each phone manufacturer (or platform such as Twitter and Facebook) will then design their own interpretation of what a ‘spy’ looks like. But they will all use the same code, so that when users communicate between different platforms, they are broadly all saying the same thing. An emoji face with heart eyes is an emoji face with heart eyes. Unicode has not historically specified the gender for most emoji characters. The emoji that most platforms originally represented as a man running, was not called ‘man running’. It was just called ‘runner’. Similarly the original emoji for police officer was described by Unicode as ‘police officer’, not ‘policeman’. It was the individual platforms that all interpreted these gender-neutral terms as male. In 2016, Unicode decided to do something about this. Abandoning their previously ‘neutral’ gender stance, they decided to explicitly gender all emojis that depicted people.38 So instead of ‘runner’ which had been universally represented as ‘male runner’, Unicode issued code for explicitly male runner and explicitly female runner. Male and female options now exist for all professions and athletes. It’s a small victory, but a significant one.

You will win every race as long as you are the only runner on the track.