Monday, October 30

Life begins at 40

Imagine winning a marathon.

Imagine in the first marathon you win, you set a world record.

Now, imagine in the second marathon you win, you win by one second.

Wow. That's just amazing to think about. That's the career of legendary Kenyan marathoner Paul Tergat.

At 37, Tergat is getting older but he returns to New York City this week to try and win the marathon in the world's greatest city again. Here's what he had to say:
“I’ve just won two marathons and I feel that I still need to win more... The most important thing for me is that I still have the passion for training and the passion to win, because if you don’t have the passion and don’t enjoy it, you’ve retired already. It’s as good as over.”


This is all well and good. Very interesting. But in another recent story I read about Tergat choosing not to run a race, the great runner said the following: "They say life begins at 40, but in athletics, that is when life ends. I am approaching (that age) and may soon be out of action."

I sent that quote to Mbarak Hussein from Camp Marafiki, who at 41 is still winning big marathons.

1 Comments:

Blogger Cherie Kail said...

Life beings at zero seconds...it only gets richer at middle age! I'm excited about that and have been trying to blog here for a week or better with no luck. Been missing the runs, all of them, but I'm still dead set on Memphis. I promise to get back to running as soon as I physically can, Brian. Meanwhile, great column on women! I need to blog on the NL blog...

October 31, 2006 12:40 pm  

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