Prior to the 1976 Olympics, I was a 5,000m runner.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
As a kid, I was a pretty good little sprinter.
When I hit New York in 1972, I thought I was a sprinter. I thought that I would star in a Broadway show and do a movie and win an Oscar by the time I was 25. It turned out that I'm a long distance runner.
My dad was a big runner. Growing up, I watched him do half marathons, and he was always running six or seven miles.
I'm a runner from sports. I've been a runner, but I wasn't a cross-country runner or anything like that. I played a lot of soccer growing up.
I could produce spurts of speed and after taking up athletics I found myself running quite quickly over 400m.
I remember running at school sports day, and I would win everything, but I wasn't a super athlete or a superstar at high school.
Since I achieved something, running has exploded in my country. For me sometimes it is difficult even to know who the athletes are who are competing at the highest level. There are thousands.
I played sports year around: basketball, soccer, softball and I ran track year around, from the time I was, like, six, seven.
I'm an athlete, but I'm not a runner. I'm 5-foot-8 and stocky - not exactly a runner's type.
I was a runner, a failed quarterback, third-string quarterback, but in track I was a 2-miler.