Quote

It's very hard in the beginning to understand that the whole idea is not to beat the other runners. Eventually you learn that the competition is against the little voice inside you that wants you to quit.

George A. Sheehan

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George A. Sheehan
Age: 74 †
Born: 1918
Born: November 5
Died: 1993
Died: November 1
Cardiologist
Military Officer
Physician
Littles
Motivational
Quit
Ideas
Inside
Quitting
Little
Wants
Eventually
Whole
Voice
Beat
Hard
Idea
Track
Learn
Beats
Understand
Competition
Runners
Running
Beginning
Marathon

More quotes by George A. Sheehan

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I run each day to preserve the self I attained the day before and to secure the self yet to be.
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And while these pounds were being shed, while the physiological miracles were occurring with the heart and muscle and metabolism, psychological marvels were taking place as well. Just so, the world over, bodies, minds, and souls are constantly being born again, during miles on the road.
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I have found my hero and he is me.
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There are as many reasons for running as there are days in the year, years in my life. But mostly I run because I am an animal and a child, an artist and a saint. So, too, are you. Find your own play, your own self-renewing compulsion, and you will become the person you are meant to be.
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To know you are one with what you are doing, to know that you are a complete athlete, begins with believing you are a runner.
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Do not tell me what to do, tell me what you do. Do not tell me what is good for me, tell me what is good for you. If, at the same time, you reveal the you in me, if you become a mirror to my inner self, then you have made a reader and a friend.
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Sport is an essential element of education.
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Out on the roads there is fitness and self-discovery and the persons we were destined to be.
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Why race? The need to be tested, perhaps the need to take risks and the chance to be number one.
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Success means having the courage, the determination, and the will to become the person you believe you were meant to be.
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Some think guts is sprinting at the end of a race. But guts is what got you there to begin with. Guts start back in the hills with 6 miles to go and you're thinking of how you can get out of this race without anyone noticing. Guts begin when you still have forty minutes of torture left and you're already hurting more than you ever remember.
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The most important thing I learned [from running] is that there is only one runner in this race, and that is me.
George A. Sheehan
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I have a bumper sticker that Bowen created that says Regardless of my kids grades, they have an 'A' in my book'. Without play the child that still lives in all of us will always be incomplete. And not only physically, but creatively, intellectually, and spiritually as well.
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Life is a positive-sum game. Everyone from the gold medallist to the last finisher can rejoice in a personal victory.
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Running is just such a monastery- a retreat, a place to commune with God and yourself, a place for psychological and spiritual renewal.
George A. Sheehan
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Running makes you an athlete in all areas of life...trained in the basics, prepared for whatever comes, ready to fill each hour and deal with the decisive moment.
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We may think there is willpower involved, but more likely... change is due to want power. Wanting the new addiction more than the old one. Wanting the new me in preference to the person I am now.
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Play is where life lives
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Happiness is different from pleasure. Happiness has something to do with struggling and enduring and accomplishing.
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The desire to run comes from deep within us — from the unconscious, the intuitive, the instinctive. And that desire becomes a passion when the runner learns to race. Then, the race becomes all — the lovemaking of the runner.
George A. Sheehan