For those who need a little motivation

ecoli

Few people losing their mojo after last while so i thought would put up a few quotes just to help (feel free to add):

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 that it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve.
It doesn't matter whether you're a lion or a gazelle
when the sun comes up you'd better be running.

You cannot propel yourself forward by patting yourself on the back

Man imposes his own limitations, don't set any

Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors.
Try to be better than yourself.

You can fight without ever winning,
but never ever, win without a fight.

Running:No half times, no time outs, no substitutions. It must be the only true sport

You have to wonder at times what you're doing out there. Over the years, I've given myself a thousand reasons to keep running, but it always comes back to where it started. It comes down to self-satisfaction and a sense of achievement

Running is the greatest metaphor for life, because you get out of it what you put into it

ger664

we are what we repeatedly do, excellence then is not a act but a habit

-Aristotle

RacoonQueen

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 that it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve.
It doesn't matter whether you're a lion or a gazelle
when the sun comes up you'd better be running.

I have that one framed beside my bed. Usually the first thing I see every morning. :pac:

TFBubendorfer

RacoonQueen wrote: »

I have that one framed beside my bed. Usually the first thing I see every morning. :pac:

You should get a boyfriend

G-Money

I like this one:

"Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever."

Oryx

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 that it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve.
It doesn't matter whether you're a lion or a gazelle
when the sun comes up you'd better be running.

Im not a gazelle. Im an oryx. Close tho.

Its better to race and lose than to be a spectator all your life.

Winning isn't everything but wanting to win is.

If you don't invest very much, then defeat doesn't hurt very much and winning is not very exciting.

The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in a man's determination.

Joeyde

Maybe a corny motivator but whenever I feel tired, or my legs give out to me or I am trying to drag myself out in the crappy weather or I feel that flag and think Im too tired..

I always say to myself "Men have done more on less" and just say it over and over. Dont have to look to hard to find examples. Really gives me a mental push.

ultraman1

"To strive,to seek,to find and not to yield"....Tennyson

"Get up of ur arse and do it".....Ultraman1

jeffontour

My personal motto during races this year has been "The quicker I run the sooner I'm done."

Works if I am considering slacking off at any time!

sideswipe

"Just Do It"

Nike

Oryx

During races the following thoughts repeat in my head:

You only get to run this race now. You can't come back to do it better. So make it count now.

This, too, will pass.

Its only pain, and I'm not quitting.

elvis jones

"no effort, no gain"

Elvis Jones

ecoli

One my favourites:

A Runner is not defined by what time they cross the finish line, but the hundreds of miles it took to get them to the start line

Ruu_Old

Run, run as fast as you can;: You can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man. -Gingerbread Man

^on my race calendar (with log).

bike2wkr

Fail to prepare - Prepare to fail

Woddle

One I've come across recently is by Dean Karnaze, it goes sth like

Pain is your friend - purging the body of weakness

Macanri

Just read this on the Raheny Shamrock website:

"When you are in a tight corner and everything goes against you until you feel you can hold on no longer. Hold on then, for that is just the time and place the tide will turn.”

couerdelion

ecoli wrote: »

Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up.
It knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed

Surely it just needs to outrun the slowest gazelle?

Chrissie Wellington uses Kipling's IF to help keep her motivated and writes part of it on her bottles.

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:


If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:


If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’


If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

David Matthews

My coach the late Noel Carroll used to say (the rain would be cutting the eyes out of you doing intervals and there would be the odd whinge and groan from me.)
"There's no such thing as bad weather,only weak men."

elvis jones

David Matthews wrote: »

My coach the late Noel Carroll used to say (the rain would be cutting the eyes out of you doing intervals and there would be the odd whinge and groan from me.)
"There's no such thing as bad weather,only weak men."

This i like as i i've used weather as an excuse to sit on the couch many times.

One from Gerry Duffy is in my head a lot now.

"If someone else can do it, so can i"

G-Money

Gerry Duffy's book arrived yesterday and I've read a few chapters of it. It's good so far, hoping to use it to light a fire under my own ass and get my weight loss sorted.

So far, so good today food-wise and exercise-wise anyway.

elvis jones

G-Money wrote: »

Gerry Duffy's book arrived yesterday and I've read a few chapters of it. It's good so far, hoping to use it to light a fire under my own ass and get my weight loss sorted.

So far, so good today food-wise and exercise-wise anyway.

Well its doing it for me ! Best book i've read in yrs

christeb

Macanri wrote: »

Just read this on the Raheny Shamrock website:

go on the Shamrocks.

I like this from a clubmate: "training for life, it's easier when you're fit" and from another "act good, look good, feel good"

woody1

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]"When a person trains once, nothing happens. When a person forces himself to do a thing a hundred or a thousand times, then he certainly has developed in more ways than physical. Is it raining? That doesn't matter. Am I tired? That doesn't matter, either. Then willpower will be no problem."
Emil Zatopek[/FONT]
Somewhere in the world someone is training when you are not. When you race him, he will win."

http://www.10ktruth.com/the_quotes/run.htm

Mr Slow

Hills are your friend

Chinguetti

TFBubendorfer

As someone who just got his knuckles rapped by his old coach for training too hard, reading this thread is not doing me any good ...

mfdc

"Today I do what others won't, so that tomorrow I can do what others can't"

Adi CkonSh

When things get bad I run to the rythm of Chocolate cake, chocolate cake..... Because the more I run the more I can eat, and chococlate cake makes everything better!

PatientBear

TFBubendorfer wrote: »

As someone who just got his knuckles rapped by his old coach for training too hard, reading this thread is not doing me any good ...

I understand your feelings, so I'll tell you what a UK Olympic athelete told us on a course.

He said professional atheletes don't train much more than amateur atheletes. It's just that they work unflinchingly on their technique, or basically, they work on quality and not quantity.

So you're coach was probably right to get you cut back if you were doing too many hours. But it is still incredibly painful attempting to improve technique in a short training interval. Keeping the mind focused on running technique for two hours is incredibly difficult...

As for a quote, I've got one from Gordo Bryn from Going Long (it was about the weather, but you can use it for any training I think)

"Get on your gear and be grateful for the opportunity to train."

I mean, it's just great. We're alive and able bodied and capable of training, but we don't know how long that may last, and it will certainly end some day.... so just train and be grateful for the opportunity.

PatientBear

Here's a really good one - maybe not so short, but the concept is fantastic:

"When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it - but all that had gone before." -- Jacob Riis, Photographer and Journalist