Bill Koch: A ski race is a celebration.

Otto Frei: There aren’t bad conditions, just skiers who can’t handle them. 

Manuela DiCenta: To fly like a bird, you must work like a dog.

John Major: The only person you have to answer to is yourself.

Fred Forseman: Train the brain for pain and train the brain to sustain.

Warren Witherell: Ski fast and leave narrow tracks.

Edwin Moses: You can’t be lackadaisical in training and concentrate in a meet.

Goerge Sheehan: Never get angry at another runner.  Rage and anger are self-defeating.

Steven Gaskill: You can’t ski faster by just skiing harder. 

The fountain of youth is perspiration. 

Jill Sickels-Matlock: Keep yourself going.  Go all the time.  Finish one turn-go into the next turn.  Just keep moving down the hill all the time. 

Lee Borowski: Training is not a spectator sport. 

John Morton: If you can convince yourself that the race is one entity, like a blank canvas in front of you, you have the opportunity to paint a masterpiece.  Every brush stroke must be exactly right.  In other words, ignore all others in the race.  Your masterpiece is yours and has nothing to do with others.  If you can paint your masterpiece, you’ll be happy with the results. 

George Mount: The more I hurt, the more I smile.  

Lon Haldeman: Use tough conditions to your advantage. 

John Morton: You can’t “work hard” at cross-country skiing; you have to relax and let it flow.

Joe Pete Wilson: The racer has to develop the idea that he is going to maintain a constant speed up the hill-that he is going to ski right up it no matter what.  And, most important, that he is going to ski right down and away once he gets to the top. 

Steven Gaskill: ... races are best when they are not too important, when we learn to relax and when we focus on what we can do, not what we can’t.

Climb joyfully!

Bill Koch: The world would be a little better place to live if more people went cross-country skiing.

John Muir: Go to the mountains and get their good tidings. 

Who wills the ends, must also will the means. 

Bjorn Lasserlud: Start out as fast as you can, then turn the throttle up.

Tommy Moe: Just think SPEED.

Bill Koch: I totally reject other people’s expectations for me.  I am prepared to give my best effort, and that is what will me make me happy.  If others can’t live with that, then it’s not my fault. 

Steven Gaskill: Greatness is an attitude. 

Torbjorn Karlsen: Love the weather. 

Jack Fertig: Basketball is just like eating.  It’s all muscle memory. 

The first rule of skiing is to have fun.

Covert Bailey: Exercise isn’t worth anything if you don’t recover from it. 

Pauli Kiuru: If you drop out once, you will do it again.

Free your heels and free your mind.

Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.

Jim Taylor’s first law: If you haven’t done it in training, you’re not going to do it in a race.

Start out insanely fast and then die all the way to the finish.

Justin Wadsworth: Race for every second!

Jay Tegeder: Stick around this sport long enough and you'll beat everybody at least once!

Running is as hard as you want to make it.

Frank Pitts, 65, began to ponder this point around midnight Saturday, as he ran [the Angeles Crest 100] up and down mountains in the wilderness darkness.  Below, he could see the twinkling city lights.  "I thought: 'I could be in a nice soft bed,' " he said, quickly adding, "Then I thought: I'm out here having fun and all those people aren't."

Pat Lanin: Cross-country skiing is not your life.  It is not the end of the world.  Being fast doesn’t make you kinder, smarter, or anything.  It means you are a fast skier.  That’s all it means.

Matt Mahoney: Quantity will make you faster, but the high mileage people I know are often addicted to exercise and can't miss a day.  I know people who run the same route every day at the same pace, but they usually don't do well even in 5K's, if they race at all.  My average works out to 2 miles a day, but in the form of hard but infrequent runs; hard because it forces an adaptive response, and infrequent because adaptation takes time.

Blake P. Wood: By the way, one of the most important ways in which I've matured as a runner over 23 years of racing, is coming to realize that I can still have a great race even if I feel lousy on the starting line (for whatever reason).  I used to get psyched out by this sort of thing, and talk myself into having a bad race.  Now I realize that it doesn't matter how I feel before the race, and that a wide variety of ailments simply disappear with the starting gun.

George Beinhorn: Stretch and Smile. 

Jay Hodde: Whenever you fail to do something, you end up doing something else.  It is easy for me to see how a DNF means I've failed in my attempt at a given distance on a given day.  It is harder for me to understand that what I did accomplish has merit of its own and should be considered a success in it own right.  The key to success is recognizing not what I've failed to do, but what I've done while not doing things exactly right. 

Seek harmony and balance in the mountains, find harmony and balance within.

Steve Prefontaine: To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the Gift.

If you can't win, make the fellow ahead of you break the record.

Yogi Beri: You can’t think and hit at the same time. 

Peter Vordenberg: Perfection is not being perfect, but being completely there.  In the race I was not perfect, but I was as perfect as I could have been, as perfectly present as it was possible for me to be. 

Bill Fitch: It’s always too soon to quit.

If you have half a mind to try ultras, you're overqualified.

Karl King: You are on a heroic journey, to be savored and enjoyed.

George Sheehan: It is not enough to have guts.  You must listen to them. 

2 Timothy 4.7: I have run the great race, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith. 

Get out of the comfort zone.

Hundred mile runs are not that different from fifty milers.  You just have to be more patient.

When you run on the earth and with the earth, you can run forever.

Ultramarathons are for the patient and calculating runner.

Dan Brannen: It never always gets worse.

Dana Roueche: The difference between a race and a training run is the amount of importance you choose to place on it.

Bob Babbitt: No matter how prepared you are, you're not.

Ron McBee: If these things [ultramarathons] were easy, everybody would be doing them.

Roger Milliken: Insanity is doing the same thing you've always done and expecting different results.

George S. Patton: If a man does his best, what else is there?

John Holt: We learn to do something by doing it.  There is no other way. 

Martina Navrotilova: With motivation, you can be involved or committed.  Just like with ham and eggs: The chicken was involved, but the pig was committed.  You have to be like the pig. 

Al Herschlag: You can’t store time by going out fast.

It feels good to hurt.  This is why you train all summer.

A medal does not make you a winner; your actions make you a winner.

Elvis Stojko: If you want to win big, you have to be prepared to lose big. 

Alaska Airlines advertisement honoring Iditarod dogs: The best long distance runners eat raw meat, run naked and sleep in the snow. 

Italian World Cup coach Cesare Maldini: Football is suffering.  Football is suffering and joy-but lots of suffering. 

You’re going to hurt even if you slow down, so you might as well race as fast as you can.

Muffy Ritz: No garbage hours.

How are you doing?  Not too bad, yet.

Florence Griffeth Joyner: You don't finish the race by kicking every barking dog along the way!

Michael Secrest: Success doesn't necessarily mean winning all the time. Success is having the courage to face your fears and still having the guts to go on.

Dr. Michael Colgan: Do not fear failure. Fear does not exist in objects or situations that confront you.  It is an obstacle to action created by your mind, created solely by false ideas of weakness that have been taught to you by others.  Whenever you are afraid, you have frightened yourself.  Once you understand that you create your own fear, then you can learn to eliminate it. The will to excel is of far greater strength than any inborn talent.  But you cannot do it halfway.  While you have the youth, make your athletic goals the focus of your life.  Do not reach old age only to accuse yourself in the mirror, '”You never even let me try.”  Go for the gusto while nature will allow it.  I can promise you it is the finest feeling you will know, as fine as the faith in the hug of your child, as fine as the gentle gaze of your lover.  A thing of ecstasy. 

Pain is weakness leaving the body. 

Bjørn Dæhlie: The joy of being in shape does not come easy. 

Train too hard on easy days and soon you’ll be training too easy on hard days. 

John Estle: There’s no such thing as overtraining–just good training and bad training. 

Kevin Setnes: Personally when I train, I think I train as hard as anyone, but when I rest, I rest very intensively.

Toughness is finding the will and skill to train and compete outside your comfort zone.

Toughness is resisting the urges to start too quickly and to finish too slowly. 

Bob Babbitt: Give 100% of what you’ve got at the moment.

Focus-think about how you can go faster right now.

Bill Snellman: If you are not 100% committed to skiing a race as fast as you can, then you won’t.

Sten Fjeldheim: Hard rest days are as important as hard training days.

Otto Schniebs: Skiing is not just a sport; skiing is a way of life!

Frank Shorter: If you’re satisfied with what you’ve done, you haven’t lost.

Bud Winter: The way to run faster is with a four-fifths effort.  Just take it nice and easy.  Going all-out is counterproductive.

Vegard Ulvang: Cross-country skiing is a sport for the patient. 

Scott Tinley: If you race merely for the tributes from others, you will be at the mercy of their expectations.

Race your strengths and train your weaknesses.

Weak muscles are sore muscles.

Erich Wilbrecht: If you’re not having fun out there … don’t do it.

Vince Lombardi: Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.

Margaret Thatcher: The manner of winning is a matter of honour.

Rolf Arands: There will come a point in the race, when you alone will need to decide. You will need to make a choice. Do you really want it? You will need to decide.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: It is a sublime thing to suffer and be stronger.

If you are going to try cross-country skiing, start with a small country. 

The key to running 100 milers is to go easy for the first 100 miles.

Keep your mind in your boat!

In the race to be your best, there is no losing.

The truth is you can race faster, and the truth hurts.

I vow not to leave this planet until I have developed my athletic capacity regardless of age to its absolute maximum.  This is my legacy to mankind.

Pete Clentzos: If you shoot for the moon and miss, you’re still among the stars.

Cathy Freeman: Do what I know.

Jean-Louis Villiot: Classic skiers make better lovers.

Jay Tegeder: Lycra never lies!

Don Kardong: Whether one is talking about climbing Mt. Everest, swimming the English Channel, or doing one's personnel equivalent of the absurd, it is, I think, the point of life to explore the boundaries of human possibilities.

Brian M. Parks: It really isn't about getting a good time so much as it is about having one.

At its worst cross-country ski racing is frustration and pain.  At its best it is ecstasy and pain.

All else is an avocation.  Skiing is life.

There's more to life than just skiing.  Let me know when you find it.

'Obsessed' is just a word the lazy use to describe the dedicated.

All you have to do is not quit.

A runner is someone who enjoys the run no matter what the "possible" health benefits.  A jogger is someone who runs only for "perceived" benefits and does not enjoy it at all.

Heraclitus: The road uphill and the road downhill are one and the same.

90% is faster than 110%.  If you’re out there hammering in the red, chances are your form and technique are suffering.  Slow down enough to be in control and you’ll be faster.

You win races on the uphills, you lose them on the downhills. 

George Sheehan: The answer to the big questions in running is the same as the answer to the big questions in life: Do the best with what you've got.

Gretel Ehrlich paraphrase: The skier does not move away from one point and toward another.  He just glides.

Jim Pellon: If you're having fun doing something, who cares how long it takes.  The longer it takes the better.

B. F. Skinner: The task is not to think of new forms of behavior but to create an environment in which they are likely to occur. 

It's not whether you win or lose that counts, it's whether I win or lose.

Lorraine Moller: Racing taught me to figure out how to win, but also how to lose in such a way that I was still a winner. Every run has been a gift. I continually give thanks for both the humbling and the triumphant moments, for they have all, in their way, uplifted my spirit.

Kevin Sayers: Race to the finish not race from the start.

Scott Tinley: Above all, train hard, eat light, and avoid TV and people with negative attitudes.

Dave Martin: Injury is a mistake in your training program.

Suffering is good, pain is not.

Arnold Lunn: Skiing is life.

Why would you want to be filthy rich when you can be a trail runner and just filthy with a lot less effort?

Lance Armstrong: If I lose this Tour by a second, I’ll just go home, have a cold beer and come back next year.  No sense whining or crying.  All I can do is my best.

Mark Swanson: If you really enjoy suffering are you being masochistic or hedonistic?

XC, No timeouts, No half-times, No substitutes.

Lance Armstrong: Pain is temporary.  Quitting lasts forever.

Cross country—Finally a good use for golf courses.

John Wilke: Racing is a blast ... but so is not racing.

Steve Pero: I feel like I’ve been eaten by a coyote and crapped off a cliff. 

It's not the arrows. It's the Indian.

Paul “Bear” Bryant: It’s not the will to win that matters.  Everyone has that.  It’s the will to prepare to win that matters. 

Peter Vordenberg: Skiing demands attention because every time you are out skiing you are teaching yourself to ski.  So every time you are out, you must teach yourself to ski well.

David L. Costill: Training is not a science.

Nate Llerandi: When you are training, work on feeling a constant sense of ease and of flow. This does not mean you need to train easy or not try your hardest.

Peggy Fleming: The first thing is to love your sport.  Never do it to please someone else.  It has to be yours.

Shannon Miller: Doing your best is more important than being the best. 

George Leonard: Competition is the spice of sports, but if you make spice the whole meal you’ll be sick.

You can never run a hill too hard, you will collapse before hurting it.

If Cross Country were easy, it would be called football.

The Surgeon General has declared that it is OK to smoke the competition.

Pain is temporary. Pride is forever.

Brad Alan Lewis: Racing without pain is not racing.

Sitting on it won’t make it any smaller.

Shannon Miller: Doing your best is more important than being the best.

Arnold Schwarzenegger: The mind, always poops out before the body.

Jana Hlavaty: There’s nothing I can’t do that I couldn’t do 20 years ago.

Alan Cabelly: Any idiot can run a marathon. It takes a special kind of idiot to run an ultramarathon.

Heywood Brown: Sports do not build character. They reveal it.

Joe Henderson: Divide the race into two parts, equal in size but very different in style. Run the first half like a scientist, with planning and restraint. Then switch in the second half to running like an artist, creatively and emotionally.

David Lygre: Don't look back; there might not be anyone behind you.

Friedrich Nietzsche: What doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger.

Jonathan Dorn: What doesn’t kill me, is almost certainly still going to hurt like hell.

Homer Simpson: Son, when you participate in sporting events, it's not whether you win or lose: It's how drunk you get.

Jack Daniels: When you feel like you absolutely must slow down, try speeding up first.

Train Hard, Complain Little, Laugh Lots

Matt Mahoney: If you let up for a second, that's where you'll finish.

Addison Walker: It’s not true that nice guys finish last.  Nice guys are winners before the game starts.

If you jog backwards, will you gain weight?

John Howie, wheelchair 10k athlete: When I did this three years ago, it was death.  When I did it last year, it was near death.  This year, it was just really hard.

Nikoli Anikin: Desire is first.  Practice with pleasure. You want a high heart rate, but don't practice hard unless you have a real desire to practice.

Max Wahlquist: Dance down the course!

United States Equestrian Federation: Not everyone can win national titles...  Very few ever compete beyond the local or regional level...  And only the especially fortunate ever make it onto the world stage...  But no one, who has ever sat in a saddle, has lost.

Sten Fjeldheim: You gotta want it!

US Cross-Country Ski Team Head Coach Pete Vordenberg: There is only one thing more important to me than winning and that is how we win.

Gerhard Schurr: Wer aufhoert, besser zu werden, der hoert bald auf gut zu sein.  (If you stop trying to be better, soon you will stop being good.)

Dick Vermeil: If you don’t invest much, then defeat doesn’t hurt very much and winning is not very exciting. 

No one ever drowned in sweat.

Lou Holtz: No one ever drowned in sweat.

Bobby Hull: Always keep your composure.  You can’t score from the penalty box. 

George Halas: Nobody who ever gave his best regretted it. 

Percy Cerutty: The mastery of the true self, and the refusal to permit others to dominate us, is the ultimate in living and self-expression in athletics.

Diana Nyad: The integrity and self-esteem gained from winning the battle against extremity are the richest treasures in my life.

Lance Armstrong: Wining is about heart, not just legs.  It’s got to be in the right place.

Normal Mailer: Masculinity is not something given to you, but something you gain.  And you gain it by winning small battles with honor. 

Chad Giese: There are no secrets to it, just get out there and do it.

You can't get fit in one workout, just as you can't live your life in one day.

Hank Garretson: When the race gets tough and you’re suffering, concentrate on good technique.

Nancy Fiddler: It’s not how many K’s you ski, it’s how much fun have skiing the K’s. 

Those who ski bravely through life, unafraid of loss or failure, find that they very rarely lose or fail.

Dave McCoy: You don’t have to be a winner, just a lover of what you’re doing.

Hard work has a future pay-off. Laziness pays off now!

Barbara Warren: When you're stuck sitting in a comfort zone, small problems become magnified. Get out of your comfort zone, touch the edge, and you come back with an appreciation for life.

Deena Kastor: As athletes, we have ups and downs.  Unfortunately, you can’t pick the days they come on.  All we can do is try our best. 

How did you score today?  Golf is more than scoring.  It’s exercise, companionship, being outdoors, a break from work.  You scored that bad, huh?

Whatever your 100% looks like, give it.

Is there such a thing as too much cross country skiing?  Yes.  Isn’t it wonderful!

Ralph Waldo Emerson: Without ambition one starts nothing.  Without work one finishes nothing.

John Wooden: If you prepare properly, you may be outscored but you will never lose. You always win when you make the full effort to do the best of which you're capable.

John Wooden: Perfection is impossibility, but striving for perfection is not. Do the best you can. That is what counts.

It is this suffering that unites us, teaches us, ennobles us. Through many long hours of suffering, we learn to rise to the occasion as we battle “higher, faster, further” in a continual march of athletic expression.

Pema Chodron: It's also helpful to realize that this very body that we have, that's sitting right here right now, with its aches and its pleasures, is exactly what we need to be fully human, fully awake, fully alive.

Life is not a spectator sport.

Native American Proverb: We will be known forever by the tracks we leave. 

Believers deserve protection.  Beliefs do not. 

Michael Jordan: I can accept failure.  Everyone fails at something.  But I can’t accept not trying. 

Josh Smullin:  Ask yourself which will be more painful, pushing yourself harder, or the pain of knowing that you did not push and race to your potential?  One pain is temporary.  The other is long lasting.