RUNNING TRIVIA & QUOTES
Real athletes run others just play games.
Champions
do not become champions when they win the event, but in the hours, weeks,
months and years they spend preparing for it. The victorious performance itself
is merely the demonstration of their championship character.
-- T. Alan Armstrong
The
greatest pleasure in life, is doing the things people say we cannot do.
-- Walter Bagehot
My
feeling is that any day I am too busy to run is a day that I am too busy.
--John Bryant
The
nine inches right here; set it straight and you can beat anybody in the world.
--Sebastian Coe
(as he said this Coe held his fingers up to his head)
The
great thing about athletics is that it's like poker, sometimes you know what's
in your hand and it may be a load of rubbish, but you've got to keep up the
front.
--Sebastian Coe
Tomorrow
is another day, and there will be another battle!
--Sebastian Coe
(a few minutes after a 2nd place finish in the 800m Olympic Games final in
Moscow 1980,
he later won the 1500m , he had been favored to win the 800m)
Our
greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
-- Confucius
All
it takes is all you got.
--Marc Davis
Run
like hell and get the agony over with.
--Clarence DeMar
The
five S's of sports training are: Stamina, Speed, Strength, Skill and Spirit;
but the greatest of these is Spirit.
--Ken Doherty
The
only tactics I admire are do-or-die
--Herb Elliott
Don't
bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors.
Try to be better than yourself.
--William Faulkner
You
have a choice. You can throw in the towel, or you can use it to wipe the sweat
off of your face.
--Gatorade
It
is true that speed kills. In distance running, it kills anyone who does not
have it.
--Brooks Johnson
If
you run 100 miles a week, you can eat anything you want -- Why? Because
(a) you'll burn all the calories you consume,
(b) you deserve it, and
(c) you'll be injured soon and back on a restricted diet anyway.
--Don Kardong
Even
if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
--- Will Rogers
When
you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.
--Theodore Roosevelt
I
had as many doubts as anyone else. Standing on the starting line, we're all
cowards.
-- Alberto Salazar
"The thing about Pre is that he ran as hard as he could every race, and if you were going to beat him, you were going to have to run harder than he did."--Bob Kennedy
It
is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness.
--Seneca
Do
a little more each day than you think you possibly can.
-Lowell Thomas
Stadiums
are for spectators. We runners have
nature and that is much better.
--Juha Vaatainen
Success
is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as
by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.
--Booker T. Washington
Running
is real and relatively simple…but it ain't easy.
--Mark Will-Weber
Once you're beat
mentally, you might as well not even go to the starting line.
--Todd Williams
Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss it you will land among the stars
- Les Brown
"No one ever drowned in sweat."
"Gold medals aren't really made of gold. They're made of sweat, determination, and a hard-to-find alloy called guts."
-Dan Gable
"In running, it doesn't matter whether you come in first, in the middle of
the pack, or last. You can say 'I have finished.' There is a lot of
satisfaction in that."
""Only think of two things - the report of the pistol and the tape.
When you hear one, run like hell until you break the other."
-Sam Mussabini
"It's rude to count people as you pass them. Out loud."
-Adidas ad
"Cross Country - Finally a practical use for golf courses."
"Some people don't have the guts for distance racing. The polite term for
them is sprinters."
"Cross Country philosophy...the faster you run the faster you're
done."
"Pain is only temporary,
Pride is forever,
Pain passes with time and Time passes,
therefore Pain is just a strain on the Brain without Refrain, and that's why Cross Country runners are Insane."
-t shirt
"pressure is nothing more than the shadow of great opportunity."
- Michael Johnson
"I'm going to go out a winner if I have to find a high school race to win my last race."
- Johnny Gray
"I always loved running...it was something you could do by yourself, and under your own power. You could go in any direction, fast or slow as you wanted, fighting the wind if you felt like it, seeking out new sights just on the strength of your feet and the courage of your lungs."
- Jesse Owens
"It hurts up to a point and then it doesn't get any worse." -
Ann Trason
"Most people run a race to see who is fastest. I run a race to see who has the most guts."
- Steve Prefontaine
"The gun goes off and everthing changes... the world changes... and nothing else really matters." -
Patti Sue Plummer
"You have to forget your last marathon before you try another. Your mind can't know what's coming." - Frank Shorter
"Some of the world's greatest feats were accomplished by people not smart enough to know they were impossible."
- Doug Larson
"If you start to feel good during an ultra, don't worry you will get over it."
- Gene Thibeault
"The woods are lovely dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep." - Robert Frost
"I have met my hero, and he is me."
- George Sheehan
"No negative thoughts cross my mind on race day. When I look into their eyes, I know I'm going to beat them."
- Danny Harris
"Tough times don't last but tough people do."
- A.C. Green
"I cannot have survival as my only goal. That would be too boring. My goal is to come back in my best running form. It is good for me to have that goal; it will help me."
- Ludmila Engquist (Olympic champion hurdler facing cancer and chemotherapy)
"Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired."
- Jules Renard
"The will to win means nothing if you haven't the will to prepare."
- Juma Ikangaa, 1989 NYC Marathon winner
"Every morning in Africa a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must move faster than the lion or it will not survive. Every morning a lion wakes up and it knows it must move faster than the slowest gazelle or it will starve. It doesn't matter if you are the lion or the gazelle, when the sun comes up, you better be moving."
- Maurice Greene
- The record for running a mile
backward is 6:02.35, by D. Joseph James of
- Based on the world 1500m record of
1:46.43, a world champion speedskater can cover a mile in about
- Based on the world 1500m record of
14:34.56, a freestyle swimmer should be able to complete a mile in about
- The world record for a mile by a
race horse is 1:32.1.
- If world-class sprinters were able
to maintain top speed for a full mile, they would cover a mile in
- The fastest any human has covered
a mile without mechanical aid is 19.45 seconds. That is based on the 185
miles-per-hour reached in a free fall from a plane. At the other extreme,
the last mile up
- A "country mile" is a
distance that seems a lot longer than a Roman mile. No one has yet broken
four minutes for a country mile.
Roger Bannister did not run the first four-minute mile. An exact 4:00.00 was first achieved on September 3, 1958 by England's Derek Ibbotson.
- The word "mile" comes
from the Latin "mille," meaning thousand. A mile was 1,000 Roman
strides, a stride being two paces.
- The current world record in the
mile is 3:43.13, set by Hicham El Guerrouj of
- Roger Bannister averaged 15.037
miles per hour when he first broke four minutes. El Guerrouj averaged
16.134 mph during his WR.
- The longest-standing world record
in the mile was 4:01.4, set by Gunder Haegg of
- The shortest period between world
records is two days. Steve Ovett of
-
- The first American to break four
minutes was the
- The oldest person to go under four
minutes was Eamonn Coghlan of
- The fastest mile by a high school
runner is 3:53.43, by Alan Webb of
- A two-year study of more than four
million high school students during the early 1980s found that the average
boy took
- The so-called "metric
mile" of 1500 meters is 119 yards, 21 inches short of a Roman mile.
- A 3:42.43 at 1500 meters is the
equivalent of a 4:00.00 mile.
- The current 1500m record of
3:26.00 by El Guerrouj equates to a 3:42.27 mile. Qu Yunxia’s women’s
1500m world record of 3:50.46 equates to a 4:08.66 mile.
- Daniel Komen’s 7:20.67 world
record at 3,000m is equal to
- On a scientifically-based table of
comparative performance, a 4:00.00 mile is equal in effort to a
- The fastest mile by a racewalker
is 5:38.2, on an indoor track.
