Don Kardong Quotes & Sayings (Page 3)

“For most teenage runners, the right foods means a varied diet, decreasing the amount of fat found in the typical American diet and replacing those calories with carbohydrates. Avoid saturated fats, such as those found in fried foods, and eat plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables.”

“If an athlete takes a shortcut - literally, for example, by running a street that shortens the marathon route by a quarter mile - he or she doesn't have an insurmountable advantage. But it's an unfair advantage, and in a field of equally matched athletes, it's more than enough to make a difference.”

“New nemeses keep racing fresh, but I also find challenge in going longer, with only the distance as foe. I run my first 50-mile race, journey across the Grand Canyon and back, circumnavigate Mount St. Helens.”

“When I was in middle school, and teachers lectured about World War II, the conflict seemed impossibly distant and irrelevant. And it had only happened 15 years earlier.”

“Coaches know that a parent publicly scolding his kid after a race will not help the athlete perform better.”

“Prior to the 1976 Olympics, I was a 5,000m runner.”

“Beginning runners come in all shapes, sizes and pre-existing conditions, so there's no magic formula for determining exactly how much basic running is needed before you start speedwork. Most experts, though, recommend three or four months of preparation.”

“The Kenyans beat up on the American runners in every road race every weekend of the year, but we're way ahead of them in the number and quality of our Elvis impersonators. We get our X-Men and gorillas.”

“My introduction to dissociation had been at Kenneth Cooper's clinic in January of 1975. Cooper had assembled a gaggle of top American distance runners and a half dozen top researchers, the intent being to figure out what the difference was - physiologically, biomechanically, psychologically - between elite and subelite runners.”

“When I went to the starting line of the 1976 Olympic marathon in Montreal, it was with the unsettling conviction that some of my competitors were cheaters.”