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Before me, sprinters retired at 23 or 24. I run because I still like it, I can make a living, and I feel I was born to do it. And because people tell me I can't do it.

I want to be like the athletes who seem stuck in time. When you see them at 50, you say they probably can still run like a champ.

I want to, at the end of the day, be able to say, 'I am a runner.'

I made my first Australian senior team when I was 16, first Olympics when I was 19, and I retired. I'm 32, I retired four years ago, so a good third of my life or nearly a third of my life has been all about running.

The reality is, I'm not 24 or 34 anymore. Things are going to be different when I prepare for and when I compete in an athletic endeavor.

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.

I'm an athlete, but I'm not a runner. I'm 5-foot-8 and stocky - not exactly a runner's type.

When I was a little boy, I always wanted to run. I loved competing with my friends.

Age-class running, as you know, is completely unreliable. It's based on this artificial thing, which is that people who are the same age have the same level of physical maturity. Which just isn't true.

I have to change a lot of things before I become a good marathon runner.