Quotes from Hal Higdon

Different people have different reasons for racing, but one is simply the incentive to get out and run, increase mileage and feel good.

There is no such thing as an average runner. We are all above average.

Even when you have gone as far as you can, and everything hurts, and you are staring at the specter of self-doubt, you can find a bit more strength deep inside you, if you look closely enough.

Running long offers a dress rehearsal. Running long teaches the stress of lifting feet 5,000 times per hour. Running long builds confidence.

Some runners judge performance by whether they won or lost. Others define success or failure by how fast they ran. Only you can judge your performance. Avoid letting others sit in judgment of you.

Life is a series of hard and easy runs.

Hills. We love them. We hate them. They make us strong. They make us weak. Today I chose to embrace hills.

Even when you have gone as far as you can, and everything hurts, and you are staring at the specter of self-doubt, you can find a bit more strength deep inside you, if you look closely enough.

There's one rule of thumb that suggests that you need one day of recovery for every mile run in a race. Another rule of thumb...suggests one day...for every kilometer run in anger.

I'd rather die smiling. And running makes me smile.

Finish: Even if you run a slower than expected time, you succeed in any marathon when you finish.

Steve Langley, a forecast manager from Beloit, Wisconsin, recalls running 15 miles with friends on a January morning when the temperature was 5°F. Running through a park with a small lake, they passed several people sitting on buckets, ice fishing. "Look at those idiots," said one of the fishermen. "They're going to freeze to death!" Langley admits thinking the same about them.

Dr. George Sheehan once said, "We are each an experiment of one.

That legend—and it is more legend than historical fact—inspired a race in 1896 at the first modern Olympic Games over approximately the same route. Only 17 runners participated in that first race. In 2010, 20,000 runners appeared for the 2,500th anniversary celebration.

You're a runner. You probably don't eat carbs, do you?

Psychological recovery is as important as physiological recovery.

after you've been running for several years and begin to shave seconds instead of minutes off your PRs, or if you start to slip backward, it is time to turn to speedwork.

Defensive running strategies thus become an important part of your training plan. If you want to have a long running career, determine what activities most often cause you to become injured, then avoid them. This is particularly true when it comes to overuse injuries that result from what might be called training errors.

We're unquestionably more at risk the hour a day that we run," says Paul D. Thompson, MD, director of preventive cardiology at Hartford Hospital in Connecticut, "but the other 23 hours in the day, we are much less at risk. In balance, you're much safer exercising than not exercising.

To become a better runner, you need to: 1) adapt a proper diet, 2) lower body fat, 3) avoid smoking and heavy drinking, 4) obtain adequate sleep, and 5) exercise regularly. Do that, and you also can add years to your life.

Running with a partner or a group can make running more enjoyable. You can gain additional knowledge about the sport, but you also can occupy your mind and make the miles pass faster.

For one thing, more and more women are running, outnumbering men in more and more marathons and half-marathons.

Make your mistakes in workouts or unimportant races.

You gotta dance with the one that brung you!