My goal has always been to slow down as slowly as possible. It's as simple as that.

To put it another way, Michael Jordan was a gym rat.

I think he had a wake-up call. It's a different kind of race, and I think maybe he didn't take it quite as seriously as he might have, but you can bet he learned a lot of lessons.

You have to forget your last marathon before you try another. Your mind can't know what's coming.

I admire runners older than I - they are now my heroes. I want to be like them as I grow older.

You have to know your body. It's part of the beauty of the training process, and once you've determined how much your body and mind can take, you can then begin to reach your potential.

Running a marathon is just like reading a good book. After a while you're just not conscious of the physical act of reading.

Yes, winning the gold medal was undoubtedly the biggest day of my career - mostly because I won the way I had prepared to run it. It was a totally satisfying experience.

A good athlete always mentally replays a competition over and over, even in victory, to see what might be done to improve the performance the next time.

Why couldn't Pheidippides have died at 20 miles?

Be willing to move forward and find out what happens next.

The true measure of a best friend is where they are when you “make” the biggest decision of your life, not where they were during the decision process.

I couldn't imagine myself doing it anymore. It was part of my life that had ended for me, and here was my chance to set out on a fresh course

Jealousy will get you nowhere.

Something has to happen that you can't coach.

The man who loves his job never works a day in his life.

Occupy yourself with what's in your life now. Address those situations and subjects as fully as possible with your best efforts. That is what produces happiness and clarity and knowledge and power.

You can't waste time and you can't save time; you can only choose what you do at any given moment.

within that ageing outer shell we remain very much the same as we did in our late teens and early twenties.

Life is very difficult and we owe it to our fellow human beings to be as cheerful as we can.

You want to dig your well where you have the best chance of finding water with the least amount of digging