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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The music of a marathon is a powerful strain, one of those tunes of glory. It asks us to forsake pleasures, to discipline the body, to find courage, to renew faith and to become one's own person, utterly and completely.
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I will not last forever. But I am damn well going to know I have been here.
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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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Of all the races, there is no better stage for heroism than a marathon.
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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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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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On the roads, I can see truth revealed whole without thought or reason. There I experience the sudden understanding that comes unasked, unbidden. I simply rest, rest within myself, rest within the pure rhythm of my running. And I wait.
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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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Sport is singularly able to give us peak experience where we feel completely one with the world and transcend all conflicts as we finally become our own potential.
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The distance runner is mysteriously reconciling the separations of body and mind, of pain and pleasure, of the conscious and the unconscious. He is repairing the rent, and healing the wound in his divided self. He has found a way to make the ordinary extraordinary the commonplace unique the everyday eternal.
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Once you have decided that winning isn't everything, you become a winner.
George A. Sheehan
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Out on the roads there is fitness and self-discovery and the persons we were destined to be.
George A. Sheehan
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Why race? The need to be tested, perhaps the need to take risks and the chance to be number one.
George A. Sheehan
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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.
George A. Sheehan
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The true runner is a very fortunate person. He has found something in him that is just perfect.
George A. Sheehan
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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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Success rests with having the courage and endurance and, above all, the will to become the person you are, however peculiar that may be. Then you will be able to say, I found my hero and he is me.
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Every runner is an experiment of one.
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Happiness is different from pleasure. Happiness has something to do with struggling and enduring and accomplishing.
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Sweat cleanses from the inside. It comes from places a shower will never reach.
George A. Sheehan