Quotes from Christopher McDougall

Over time, a subtle cancer spread: where you have more experts, you create more bystanders. Professionals did all the fighting and fixing we used to handle ourselves; they even took over our fun, playing our sports while we sat back and watched.

You run on the earth and run with the earth, you can run forever.

We do not stop running because we get old, we get old because we stop running

Ask nothing from running and you'll get more than you ever imagined

Dr. Neil Roach, of George Washington University, lead author of a 2013 study that tackles the mystery of why, out of all other primates on the planet, we're the only ones who can kill prey with a lethal throw.

Practice abundance by giving back," and "Improve personal relationships," and "Show integrity to your value system." Vigil's dietary advice was just as bare of sports or science. His nutrition strategy for an Olympic marathon hopeful was this: "Eat as though you were a poor person.

Now, Ah Hing, I'm going to teach you how to fight like a woman. —GRANDMASTER IP MAN, Bruce Lee's teacher

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.

Heroes aren't perfect; with a god as one parent and a mortal as the other, they're perpetually teetering between two destinies. What tips them toward greatness is a sidekick, a human connection who helps turn the spigot on the power of compassion. Empathy, the Greeks believed, was a source of strength, not softness; the more you recognized yourself in others and connected with their distress, the more endurance, wisdom, cunning, and determination you could tap into.

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.

Nothing works out according to plan, but it always works out.

As a sport, most track coaches ranked ultras somewhere between competitive eating and recreational S&M.

Beyond the very extreme of fatigue and distress, we may find amounts of ease and power we never dreamed ourselves to own; sources of strength never taxed at all because we never push through the obstruction." As

You don't stop running because you get old', said the Demon. 'You get old because you stop running.

I knew aerobic exercise was a powerful antidepressant, but I hadn't realized it could be so profoundly mood stabilizing and--I hate to use the word--meditative. If you don't have answers to your problems after a four-hour run, you ain't getting them.

Middle-aged women are likewise no strangers to the lead pack in ultramarathons. Pam Reed was forty-one when she outran all the men to win the 135-mile Badwater ultra across Death Valley in 2002; the following year, she returned and did it again. Diana Finkel was just shy of forty when she led for the first ninety miles of the brutally hard Hardrock 100, finishing second overall.

Running seemed to be the fitness version of drunk driving: you could get away with it for a while, you might even have some fun, but catastrophe was waiting right around the corner.

Être fort pour être utile," Hébert declared. "Be fit to be useful.

The only way to conquer something, as every great philosopher and geneticist will tell you, is to love it.

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.

If you don't have answers to your problems after a four-hour run, you ain't getting them.

You don't start with today and aim toward your goal. You start with the goal, and aim back toward today. Do it like that, and you'll always find a way.

When he zoomed in, he was startled by what he found: instead of each foot clomping down as it would in a shoe, it behaved like an animal with a mind of its own—stretching, grasping, seeking the ground with splayed toes, gliding in for a landing like a lake-bound swan.

The ancient Greeks loved that little interlocking contradiction, the idea that you're only your strongest when you have a weakness for other people. They saw