작년에 국문판을 읽고 너무 좋아서 영문판도 읽었다. 어린이책을 읽는 나의 영어 수준으로 완독에 오래 걸렸고 모호하게만 이해되는 부분도 많았지만(이미 읽은 국문판도 기억 저 멀리 사라져~). 그래도 좋다. 나의 달리기 실력 만큼이나 나의 영어 실력도 거북이처럼 느리게 성장하지만 몇 년 후 다시 읽으면 조금 더 또는 다르게 이해될 것이다.
Once you have a scary incident like that, you really take it to heart. In most cases learning something essen-tial in life requires physical pain. Since that incident on the bike, no matter how tired I might be I always keep my head up and I my eyes on the road ahead. - P140
I expect that this winter I‘ll run another marathon some-where in the world. And I‘m sure come next summer I‘ll be out in another triathlon somewhere, giving it my best shot. Thus the seasons come and go, and the years pass by. I‘ll age one more year, and probably finish another novel. One by one, I‘ll face the tasks before me and complete them as best I can. Focusing on each stride forward, but at the same time taking a long-range view, scanning the scenery as far ahead as I can. I am, after all, a long-distance runner, - P173
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
So I try, in the short amount of time I have, to take care of all these things as best I can. And I have to keepup my running to prepare for the NYC Marathon. Evenif there were two of me, I still couldn‘t do all that has tobe done. No matter what, though, I keep up my run-ning. Running every day is a kind of lifeline for me, soI‘m not going to lay off or quit just because I‘m busy. If Iused being busy as an excuse not to run, I‘d never runagain. I have only a few reasons to keep on running, anda truckload of them to quit. All I can do is keep those fewreasons nicely polished. - P73
People sometimes sneer at those who run every day, claiming they‘ll go to any length to live longer. But Idon‘t think that‘s the reason most people run. Most run-ners run not because they want to live longer, butbecause they want to live life to the fullest. If you‘re - P82
going to while away the years, it‘s far better to live them with clear goals and fully alive than in a fog, and I believe running helps you do that. Exerting yourself to the fullest within your individual limits: that‘s the essence of running, and a metaphor for life-and for me, for writing as well. I believe many runners would agree. - P83
No-forget about beer. And forget about the sun. Forget about the wind. Forget about the article I have to write. Just focus on moving my feet forward, one afterthe other. That‘s the only thing that matters. - P64
This was my first-ever experience running (nearly) twenty-six miles. And, happily, it was the last time I everhad to run twenty-six miles in such grueling conditions. In December of the same year I ran the HonoluluMarathon in a fairly decent time. Hawaii was hot, butnothing compared to Athens. So Honolulu was my firstofficial full marathon. Ever since then it‘s been my prac-tice to run one full marathon a year.Rereading the article I wrote at the time of this run inGreece, I‘ve discovered that after twenty-some years, and as many marathons later, the feelings I have when Irun twenty-six miles are the same as back then. Evennow, whenever I run a marathon my mind goes throughthe same exact process. Up to nineteen miles I‘m sure Ican run a good time, but past twenty-two miles I run outof fuel and start to get upset at everything. And at the - P67
end I feel like a car that‘s run out of gas. But after I finishand some time has passed, I forget all the pain and mis-ery and am already planning how I can run an even bet-ter time in the next race. The funny thing is, no matterhow much experience I have under my belt, no matterhow old I get, it‘s all just a repeat of what came before.I think certain types of processes don‘t allow for anyvariation. If you have to be part of that process, all youcan do is transform-or perhaps distort-yourselfthrough that persistent repetition, and make that pro-cess a part of your own personality.Whew! - P68
