Don Kardong

“The toughest trail I ever ran was the Escarpment in the Catskills of New York State. This was an 18-mile race through Rip Van Winkle country, routed through boulder fields, across angular ju...”

“Cheer for your teammates, regardless of whether they're fast or slow, veteran or neophyte, varsity or JV. Or rally the spirits of someone who's had a bad performance. Also, encourage straggl...”

“The body responds to a calorie deficit by slowing down the metabolism and burning muscle tissue. That leads to weakness, sluggishness, slow times. In girls, it can also result in cessation o...”

“When I went to the starting line of the 1976 Olympic marathon in Montreal, it was with the unsettling conviction that some of my competitors were cheaters.”

“When an athlete has relegated the persistent rumors of cheating to the back room of the mind, he hasn't really forgotten them. And when he glances back to where rumors hunker in the darkness...”

“I've never owned an actual trail-running shoe myself, but maybe I should. My favorite paths are fraught with peril, much of it skulking at shoelace level. A rock, a root, an errant pine cone...”

“Clearly, there are things a runner does, intentionally or not, that disrupt team cohesion. And there are also things a runner doesn't do that can cause problems: not trying, showing up late,...”

“Sure, the first light snowfall may be a chance to dance giddily, leaving squeaky footprints through the neighborhood, marking the runner's right to the domain. But later drubbings of snow me...”

“Running at night used to frighten me. Part of it was simply safety, the question of whether level ground would truly appear under each tentative footstep, and whether the temporary but compl...”

“For most teenage runners, the right foods means a varied diet, decreasing the amount of fat found in the typical American diet and replacing those calories with carbohydrates. Avoid saturate...”

“Even for runners who never make the transition to more sophisticated workouts, easing into speedwork will lead to more enjoyable running.”

“New nemeses keep racing fresh, but I also find challenge in going longer, with only the distance as foe. I run my first 50-mile race, journey across the Grand Canyon and back, circumnavigate...”

“If an athlete takes a shortcut - literally, for example, by running a street that shortens the marathon route by a quarter mile - he or she doesn't have an insurmountable advantage. But it's...”

“My introduction to dissociation had been at Kenneth Cooper's clinic in January of 1975. Cooper had assembled a gaggle of top American distance runners and a half dozen top researchers, the i...”

“Eventually, competition and adventure wane, and I enter my ibuprofen phase. Tweaky hamstrings and achy knees restrict mileage, but I continue running for health, sanity, and the ritual of a...”

“I know runners who have suffered a tick bite and ended up with Lyme disease. I'll take an angry moose any day.”

“In those long, lonely miles you put in during the off-season, and in those knife-in-the-gut track repetitions and hill repeats that buckle your knees - at that moment in almost every race wh...”

“An overzealous parent is just one example of the kind of Problem Mom or Dad who pops up at track meets, threatening to put a damper on the day.”

“When I started running, a gadget was a wristwatch with a secondhand on it.”