Don Kardong Quotes

#1. 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.

Don Kardong

#2. I've never owned an actual trail-running shoe myself, but maybe I should. My favorite paths are fraught with peril, much of it skulking at shoelace level. A rock, a root, an errant pine cone. Wham, and you're down, choking in dust and picking pebbles from wounds in your forearms and knees.

Don Kardong

#3. When I started running, a gadget was a wristwatch with a secondhand on it.

Don Kardong

#4. 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.

Don Kardong

#5. Train at the same pace day after day, week after week, year after year, and that's the kind of running the body adapts to. But break out of that comfort zone with a little speedwork now and then, and the body will learn to deal with the new demands.

Don Kardong

#6. The key to running a good marathon is to not listen to anyone's advice the last week before the race. That's when people tend to do stupid things that disrupt all the input and training of the previous months.

Don Kardong

#7. Cold is not without its risks to runners, of course, especially ones who don't head south when winter visits their neighborhood. Even pooh-pooh-ers of frozen lungs and lovers of dark jogs over permafrost have been known to be careful about certain hazards.

Don Kardong

#8. 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.

Don Kardong

#9. The body responds to a calorie deficit by slowing down the metabolism and burning muscle tissue. That leads to weakness, sluggishness, slow times. In girls, it can also result in cessation of menstrual periods, which in turn leads to loss of bone density and frequent stress fractures.

Don Kardong

#10. 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.

Don Kardong

#11. Grizzly bears eat people without the benefit of music.

Don Kardong

#12. Runners like to train 100 miles per week because it's a round number. But I think 88 is a lot rounder.

Don Kardong

#13. There's always somebody doing something more extreme than you are. It used to be that if you ran the marathon, that was the end of it.

Don Kardong

#14. There's no such thing as a bad carbohydrate.

Don Kardong

#15. Support the athlete, encourage the team, help the coach. That's what good track parents do.

Don Kardong

#16. A good teammate is someone willing to get outside of personal thoughts and emotions, a friend who tries to understand, appreciate, and encourage other members of the team.

Don Kardong

#17. Prior to the 1976 Olympics, I was a 5,000m runner.

Don Kardong

#18. No doubt a brain and some shoes are essential for marathon success, although if it comes down to a choice, pick the shoes. More people finish marathons with no brains than with no shoes.

Don Kardong

#19. Even for runners who never make the transition to more sophisticated workouts, easing into speedwork will lead to more enjoyable running.

Don Kardong

#20. You entered a marathon with hills? You idiot.

Don Kardong

#21. 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.

Don Kardong

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

Don Kardong

#23. Without ice cream there would be darkness and chaos.

Don Kardong

#24. Cheer for your teammates, regardless of whether they're fast or slow, veteran or neophyte, varsity or JV. Or rally the spirits of someone who's had a bad performance. Also, encourage stragglers during tough workouts; jog back to 'pick up' a runner who's behind during a long run.

Don Kardong

#25. An overzealous parent is just one example of the kind of Problem Mom or Dad who pops up at track meets, threatening to put a damper on the day.

Don Kardong

#26. If you run 100 miles a week, you can eat anything you want - Why? Because (a) you'll burn all the calories you consume, (b) you deserve it, and (c) you'll be injured soon and back on a restricted diet anyway.

Don Kardong

#27. 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.

Don Kardong

#28. 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.

Don Kardong

#29. Avoid any diet that discourages the use of hot fudge.

Don Kardong

#30. Clearly, there are things a runner does, intentionally or not, that disrupt team cohesion. And there are also things a runner doesn't do that can cause problems: not trying, showing up late, skipping team-building activities, and ignoring the coach's instructions.

Don Kardong

#31. I know runners who have suffered a tick bite and ended up with Lyme disease. I'll take an angry moose any day.

Don Kardong

#32. We (ultra runners) alternate between depression and stupidity.

Don Kardong

#33. When an athlete has relegated the persistent rumors of cheating to the back room of the mind, he hasn't really forgotten them. And when he glances back to where rumors hunker in the darkness, he hopes with a savage heart that somehow, some day, those cheaters will be brought to justice.

Don Kardong

#34. Running at night used to frighten me. Part of it was simply safety, the question of whether level ground would truly appear under each tentative footstep, and whether the temporary but complete blindness suffered while running toward headlights was, in fact, concealing death.

Don Kardong