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When I started running, the pain barrier was very familiar to me, and I had no problem pushing beyond the pain. When for your whole life, every single workout, you are programmed to push beyond belief, it's really hard to just turn that off and kind of just be a social competitor.

There has never been a great athlete who died not knowing what pain is.

You don't have to try to hurt people and be angry to be an athlete.

If you see in sports at a super high level, people get hurt or have injuries when there isn't that pleasure, the true pleasure of the sport, when they're tired or demoralized or they're not quite focused.

Coping with injuries is always difficult for athletes because all we want to do is, basically, to have our best performances unhindered.

I started out as a football player. I liked to inflict pain. In basketball, it was the same thing.

The paradox of endurance sports is that an athlete can never work as hard as he wants, because if he pushes himself too far, his hematocrit will fall.