Once A Runner - John L. Parker, JR

 

• Un livre qui transpire le vécu des athlètes à haut niveau de performance. Un livre avec un vocabulaire extrêmement riche qui donne une description particulièrement authentique de ce que représente la course à pied en termes d'effort physique, de mental et de la philosophie du coureur. Bref un livre qui parle pour tout coureur à pied. Seule l'expérience vécue alliée à un vocabulaire puissant est capable de traduire tout ce que ressent et vie un coureur.
• Then he put his mind into neutral, locked on to the freckled (plein de tâches de rousseur) shoulder, and obtaining his mental abstracts: gliding, floating, covering ground.
• He also kept telling himself that they wouldn't all be this bad because if they were he surely couldn't live with it.
• But hang on, asshole, and maybe you can be a hero at the end.
• But as many runners he began to improve with age.
• Though he hated running long in the morning more than anything he could think of, Cassidy was ecstatic (fou de joie) to have his whole day's training behind him.
• One race represented months of training; each step the product of many miles of preparation.
• He was already beginning to ask himself the eternal self-doubt question: What Am I Doing Here?
• A runner is a miser (radin), spending the pennies of his energy with great stinginess (avarice), constantly wanting to know how much he has spent and how much longer he will be expected to pay. He wants to be broke at precisely the moment he no longer needs his coin.
• A runner who could not run was out of his element.
• Life is short, life is hard.
• Only two interval sessions a week and a long one on Sunday about 20 miles (32 km)
• Soon they will miss a workout. Then a few in a row.
• Quenton Cassidy's method of dealing with fundamentals doubts was simple: he didn't think about them at all. These questions had been considered a long time ago, decisions made, answers recorded, and the book closed.
• Not only better than his fellows, but better than himself.
• If he could conquer the weakness, the cowardice in himself, he would not worry about the rest.
• Dark, rainy mornings.
• He ran because it grounded him in basics.
• No one promised you there would be the universal justice.
• Little tricks of the mind were important to them. They knew it was psychologically easier to run a familiar course than a new one, so contrary to the advice in the magazines and jogger manuals, they seldom went exploring for changes of scenery.
• Though the toil (labeur) was arduous, they rarely spoke of the discomfort of training or racing in terms of pain; they knew that what gave pain its truly fearful dimension was a certain lack of familiarity. And these were sensations they knew very well.
• Cassidy locked in a steady pace, allowing his mind to slip into the pleasant half-conscious neutral state that all runners develop.
• How everyone loves a winner.
• I'm advising that you practice a certain amount of discretion.
• You've never seemed hungry enough.
• Go for the big time.
• That quarter-mile oval may be one of the few places in the world where the bastards can't screw you over. That's because there's no place to hide out there. No way to fake it or charm your way through, no deals to be made.
• We can strengthen the mind, temper the spirit, make the heart a goddamn machine. But then a strand of gristle (nerf) goes pop and presto you're a pedestrian.
• Lymphe, tissu lymphatique : liquide biologique, contient des globules blancs. Le tissu conjonctif soutient, lie ou distingue différents types de tissus et d'organes du corps.
• But all the books helped him one way or another.
• You barkin'up the wrong sleeve : tu fais fausse route.
• This rain that furnished the same kind of isolation as the dark of the night.
• A game can be won or lost on a split second's hesitation.

The Interval workout

• The runner deals nearly daily in such absolutes of physical limitations that the non runner confronts only in dire situations.
• The only difference between one and the next was the slight increase in lactic acid in the lifting muscles on the top of the thigh that made each a little more difficult and started hurting earlier in the sprint.
• The key was not how fast he could run, but how fast could run while tired.
• And more important the incredible psych he would build up prior to the race.
• In training it was best to think about training.
• Recovery was the key.
• In their minds they took up each set separately, as if it were all they had to do.
• But I expect you'll find out in your own way. That's why I'm going to let you do them by yourself, just the way people do everything that's important.
• No Highly trained runner slacks off (se relâcher) because he fears the pain, but because the quiet center of logic tells him he will win nothing if he runs himself to a standstill (arrêt).
• His mind was devoid of any thought save finishing the last one.
• Filled the toiled with bloody urine.

• You run  twenty miles? Without stopping?
• What was the secret, they wanted to know; in a thousand ways they wanted to know The Secret. And not one of them was prepared, truly prepared, to believe that it had not so much to do with chemicals and zippy (rapide) mental tricks as with that most unprofound and sometimes heartrending (déchirant) processes of removing molecule by molecule, the very tough rubber that comprised the bottoms of his training shoes. The Trial of Miles; Miles of Trials.
• When you're training you can think about anything you want, almost. But in a race, everyone thinks about the same thing: the race.
• I'll be out early and we'll talk strategy.
• You know those demons of yours you're always talking about?
• Knew well the carnivorous nature of prerace fears.
• You had to be calm in the heavy traffic, he knew, hold back your impatience and control the panic; wait for opportunities.
• At this point the carefully nurtured mental toughness, tempered by hours of interval work, would allow him to endure the shock to his system and race on.

Again to Carthage

• Loll (fainéantiser). That was the word for it. Time lolled away napping, thinking, daydreaming, waiting for his damaged corpuscles to rearrange themselves into a more perfect union.
• Trying to keep his shoes dry as long as he could.
• It wouldn't do any good to shower yet, he would just start sweating again.
• We definitely know our way around deferred gratification.
• It's your life you've been deferring. That comes crashing in on you. Maybe it hasn't really hit you yet, but it will.
• Live like a clock. What Jumbo meant was keep to you schedule. Eat at the same time, sleep at the same time. Live like a clock.
• Anyone with a week to live is undoubtedly in serious trouble, regardless of his finances.
• Context and chronology are everything.
• You've capitalized yourself mightily to this point.
• For years and years now, putting everything in, taking nothing out.
• No one will blame you, no one will fault you. Everything doesn't have to hurt, everything doesn't have to be a battle.