Grete Waitz
Grete Waitz
Grete Waitzwas a Norwegian marathon runner and former world record holder. In 1979, she became the first woman in history to run the marathon in under two and a half hours. She won nine New York City Marathons between 1978 and 1988, more than any other runner in history. She won a silver medal at the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles and a gold medal at the 1983 World Championships in Helsinki. Her other marathon victories included winning the...
NationalityNorwegian
ProfessionRunner
Date of Birth1 October 1953
CountryNorway
In terms of fitness and battling through cancer, exercise helps you stay strong physically and mentally.
My goal has always been to introduce other people to running. They might accomplish something they never thought they could.
Spend at least some of your training time, and other parts of your day, concentrating on what you are doing in training and visualizing your success.
I don't think I would have been such a good runner if I hadn't enjoyed it.
Exercise and sports are greatly affected by what goes into the mind, and the mind is greatly affected by sports and exercise as well. This is true among exercisers at all levels, despite their different goals. A major element in mental training is visualization ... Visualizing a positive outcome can create a pattern of success, as long as you set realistic and specific goals.
Too many people I meet believe that you can sit in a chair and be given motivation. With exercise and fitness, you get it by doing. The mental qualities you need are all linked like a chain. If you give exercise a try and see results, even if it's as simple as feeling good that you get out the door, you'll become motivated to repeat the exercise. Seeing results is inspiring.
For every finish-line tape a runner breaks -- complete with the cheers of the crowd and the clicking of hundreds of cameras -- there are the hours of hard and often lonely work that rarely gets talked about.
You've got to look for tough competition. You've got to want to beat the best.
Everyone wins the marathon. We all have the same feeling at the start-nervous, anxious, excited. It is a broader, richer, and even with twenty-seven thousand people-more intimate experience than I found when racing in track. New York is the marathon that all the biggest stars want to win, but has also been the stage for an array of human stories more vast than any other sporting event.
There is something about the ritual of the race - putting on the number, lining up, being timed - that brings out the best in us.