When I was young, I was too slow. I thought I must learn to run fast by practicing to run fast, so I ran 100 meters fast 20 times. Then I came back, slow, slow, slow.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I could produce spurts of speed and after taking up athletics I found myself running quite quickly over 400m.
I could run, but I was throwing 93 mph coming out of high school.
When I came here at UTech, everybody was saying I was too short, and I shouldn't think about running fast; it's going to take me a while to run fast.
I was indeed very slow as a youngster.
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 father, though, could run very much faster. It was impossible to compete with him on the grass. But it was astonishing how slow old people were. Some of them could not run up a hill and called it trying to climb stairs.
I'm a fast learner. I may not run as fast as I used to, but I think I still learn as fast.
When I was young, I was in a hurry to live. And now I'm just not in a hurry.
I was running to catch a train when one of my teachers saw me. He thought I was fast, time me, and later gave me my first instructions in sprinting. I happened to be at the right place at the right time.