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I just wanted to quit running. My coach, Tracy Walters, took me aside and told me that I had an opportunity few people ever get. He said that I could inspire the whole team because I was so small and unathletic.

Gerry Lindgren

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Gerry Lindgren
Age: 78
Born: 1946
Born: March 9
Athletics Competitor
Spokane
Washington
Running
Quitting
Ever
Coaches
Inspire
Wanted
Took
Walters
Whole
Told
Tracy
People
Team
Coach
Small
Aside
Opportunity
Quit

More quotes by Gerry Lindgren

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I got into running because I was too uncoordinated to play baseball, too small for basketball, and too tiny for football. I lived in a broken home and had looked to those sports as a way of staying away from my home.
Gerry Lindgren
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Speedwork is terribly overrated! I remember talking to runners after distance races and someone is sure to say they were able to run fast off base work with no speed work at all. The truth is speedwork doesn't work. Lots of miles, and then fast miles gets you there much quicker than speed work.
Gerry Lindgren
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I thought perhaps people with injuries could be subject to a starters gun to cure them.
Gerry Lindgren
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Run with your heart instead of your mind. When you think with your mind, you think of the things you can and can't do. But when you run with your heart you forget about what you can't do, and you just go out and do it.
Gerry Lindgren
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COURAGE is not a quality you teach. Courage is the by-product of self-discipline. It is an ATTITUDE.
Gerry Lindgren
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I always enjoyed the training more than I did the racing. There was a high level of anxiety in racing that I did not enjoy. Training runs set me FREE. I could imagine the race in my mind and race as if it were the actual race.
Gerry Lindgren
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Goals should be impossible! You should tread FEARLESSLY where the brave dare not go.
Gerry Lindgren
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The best runners every year are those who race out way too fast.
Gerry Lindgren
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Set a new standard. Change reality. Break ground to something new and different. That achievement will live forever just because you WERE somebody special!
Gerry Lindgren
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News people were holding me up as a symbol of defiance to the boycott and I couldn't even run.
Gerry Lindgren
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I never did cross training or lifted weights or put anything between myself and my passion for running.
Gerry Lindgren
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If you look at your life and compare your life to that of an evil person, you will find that in most regards both lives are the same. You don't live a longer life or live forever by being virtuous.
Gerry Lindgren
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Kids as young as twelve CAN run 90 minutes, and they can train hard to run fast, BUT they lose something in training hard at that early age.
Gerry Lindgren
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The 3-minute mile goal is to teach runners that the impossible is where goals should be set.
Gerry Lindgren
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There is NOTHING you can do with your running time that is better for you than running. Any other activity only pulls you down and erases passion.
Gerry Lindgren
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There are champions in every neighborhood. Anyone can run to the very top. ANYONE! But you have to (a) start right, (b) think right, and (c) believe. Most runners get lost in one or more of those three steps.
Gerry Lindgren
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I had on my team a girl who at age twelve just missed the world mile record for her age group. But at 20 she just couldn't run.
Gerry Lindgren
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Setting goals that have already been achieved is a cop-out.
Gerry Lindgren
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I would instill in my team an attitude of role modeling. We run to teach other people the value of physical activity. In all things, be humble and appreciative hurt no one help anyone you can.
Gerry Lindgren
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I started running in Junior High School. I was so slow and uncoordinated the coach set me up with a paper route so that instead of going to work out after school I went to the corner of Providence Ave at Crestline St. and picked up a bundle of 15 newspapers.
Gerry Lindgren