Inspiration in a Quote

I’ve never really taken part in Take It and Run Thursday (TIaRT), which is a weekly meeting of the running minds over at Runner’s Lounge every Thursday. Is it because I’m a maverick and I prefer to do my own thing? Is it because I don’t like being tied down to a specific topic? Is it because I’m highly under-qualified to give advice? No, mostly I think it comes down to laziness. Not my laziness mind you, Tom and Amy’s laziness. Tom and Amy never ever send me a personal e-mail to remind me that it’s Thursday and spell out the topic of the TIaRT. I guess that they figure it’s enough that they tell us what the topic is the previous week and then post about it on the Runner’s Lounge Wednesday and Thursday, but that just feels so impersonal. I mean, is it too much to ask that they pick up the phone and call me?

This week’s theme is Running Quotes and Sayings. When it comes to motivational quotes I’ve always loved Despair.com’s Motivation Poster which says “If a pretty poster and a cute saying are all it takes to motivate you, you probably have a very easy job. The kind robots will be doing soon.” The funny thing is, there are some quotes that really do motivate me to get out the door and run. I guess I should make sure my resume is updated.

The first two quotes I’ll share with you are original Vanilla quotes. I wrote them myself, at least I think I did. It’s quite possible that I read them somewhere and then forgot about them, which by the way is the official line that I will be sticking with.

“Respect the distance, don’t fear it.” I scrawled this across the bottom of my marathon training plan in bold red ink. I had become so focused on respecting the distance that I had placed it on a pedestal. I was so fearful of becoming overconfident that I was completely losing all my confidence. I already had visions of how tough it would be at the end. I was already preparing myself for the final miles to be an exercise in futility. I don’t think it has to be like that. I don’t think it will be easy by any means but I see no reason with the right training, that I can’t finish this marathon strong. “Respect the distance, don’t fear it,” is my happy middle ground between being overly confident and expecting a dismal failure.

“I’m in ‘like’ with running, I’m in love with better results.” Coincidentally, I first wrote that phrase for my Open Mic Friday interview at Runner’s Lounge. The idea behind this quote is that I love getting better, I love getting faster, and I’ll do whatever it takes to make that happen. I like running, I enjoy it, but what I love is getting better at it. There will probably come a time when I reach some kind of peak and I will no longer be able to get any faster or any better. I’m not sure what will happen when that day comes, but I’ll let you know when I get there.

Along the same line of thought, I have always loved the quote that Frayed Laces uses all the time: “There will be a day when you can no longer do this... Today is NOT that day.”

Finally, here are a couple that I’ve actually posted before, I’ve never been able to pin down exactly who said these so I’m not going to give any credit other than to say that these aren’t mine:

“Somewhere in the world someone is training when you are not. When you race him, he will win.”

“Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a lion or gazelle - when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.”

I think that’s enough quotivation out of me for one day, but be sure to check out what other bloggers are saying on this issue by heading over to Runner’s Lounge.