Still, it‘s pretty wonderful to watch these pretty girls run. As I do, I‘m struck by an obvious thought: One generation takes over from the next. This is how things arehanded over in this world, so I don‘t feel so bad if theypass me. These girls have their own pace, their own sense of time. And I have my own pace, my own sense of time. The two are completely different, but that‘s the way it should be. - P94
Since I was on autopilot, if someone had told me to keep on running I might well have run beyond sixty-two miles. It‘s weird, but at the end I hardly knew who Iwas or what I was doing. This should have been avery alarming feeling, but it didn‘t feel that way. By thenrunning had entered the realm of the metaphysical. First there came the action of running, and accompa-nying it there was this entity known as me. I run; there-fore I am. - P113
If you‘re a long-distance runner who trains hard everyday, your knees are your weak point. Every time yourfeet hit the ground when you run, it‘s a shock equivalentto three times your weight, and this repeats itself per-haps over ten thousand times a day. With the hard con-crete surface of the road meeting this ridiculous amountof weight (granted, there‘s the cushioning of the shoesbetween them), your knees silently endure all this end-less pounding. If you think of this (and I admit it‘s some-thing I don‘t usually think about), it would seem strangeif you didn‘t have a problem with your knees. You haveto expect the knees to want to complain sometimes, tocome up with a comment like, "Huffing and puffingdown the road‘s all well and good, but how about payingattention to me every once in a while? Remember, if wego out on you, we can‘t be replaced." - P127
On October 20, after resting and not running for four days because of the rain and that weird sensation in my knee, I ran again. In the afternoon, after the tempera-ture had risen a bit, I put on warm clothes and slowly jogged for about forty minutes. Thankfully, my knee felt all right. I jogged slowly at first, but then gradually sped up when I saw things were going okay. Everything was okay, and my leg, knee, and heel were working fine. This was a great relief, because the most important thing for me right now is running in the New York City Marathon and finishing it. Reaching the finish line, never walking, and enjoying the race. These three, in this order, are my goals. - P131
All I have to go on are experience and instinct. Expe-rience has taught me this: You‘ve done everything youneeded to do, and there‘s no sense in rehashing it. All youcan do now is wait for the race. And what instinct hastaught me is one thing only: Use your imagination. So Iclose my eyes and see it all. I imagine myself, along withthousands of other runners, going through Brooklyn, through Harlem, through the streets of New York. I seemyself crossing several steel suspension bridges, and experience the emotions I‘ll have as I run along bustling Central Park South, close to the finish line. I see the old - P133
steakhouse near our hotel where we‘ll eat after the race. These scenes give my body a quiet vitality. I no longer fixmy gaze on the shades of darkness. I no longer listento the echoes of silence. - P134
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