Parce que, comme je le lis ici, et je le vis ici, ce qui importe dans les activités que nous choisissons – et donc, pour moi, mes responsabilités professionnelles, la vie privée, et particulièrement le sport et la course à pied – c’est aussi l’esprit.
Découvrez quelques extraits choisis ci-dessous, contactez-moi si vous le lisez ou l’avez lu. Et – bonne lecture !
(p11) [...] read the world according to Garp (en/fr) in twenty years, I’ve never forgotten one minor scene, and it ain’t the one you’re thinking of: I keep thinking back to the way Garp used to burst out his door in the middle of the workday for a five-mile run. There’s something so universal about that sensation, the way running unites our two most primal impulse: fear and pleasure. We run when we’re scared, we run when we’re ecstatic, we run away from ou problems and run around for a good time. [...]
(p13) [...] it reminded me of a proverb attributed to Roger Bannister (en/fr), who, while simultaneously studying medicine, working as a clinical researcher, and minting pithy parables, became the first man to break the four-minute mile : “Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up,” Bannister said. “It knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a lion or a gazelle
- When the sun comes up, you’d better be running.” [...]
(p36) [...] “Caballo Blanco es muy amable,” Angel said, concluding his story, “pero un poco raro.” The White Horse is a good guy, in other words, if like ‘em a little loony.
“So you think he’s still out there?” I asked.
“Hombre, claro,” Angel said. “He was here yesterday. I gave him a drink with that cup.”
I looked around. There was no cup.
“The cup was there, too,” Angel insisted.[...]
(p50) [...] And if i really wanted to understand the Rarámuri, I should have been there when this ninety-five-year-old man came hiking twenty-file miles over the mountain. Know why he could do it ? Because no one ever told him he couldn’t. No one ever told him he oughta be off dying somewhere in an old age home. You live up to your own expectations, man. [...]
(p69) [...] But yeah, Ann insisted, running was romantic; and no, of course her friends didn’t get it because they’d never broken through. [...] You have to listen closely to the sound of your own breathing; be aware of how much sweat is beading on your back; make sure you treat yourself to cool water and a salty snack and ask yourself honestly and often, exactly how you feel. What could be more sensual than paying exquisite attention to your own body? Sensual counted as romantic, right? [...]
(p93) [...] Distance running was revered because it was indispensable; it was the way we survived and thrived and spread across the planet. You ran to eat and to avoid being eaten; you ran to find a mate and impress her, and with her you ran off to start a new life together. You had to love running, or you wouldn’t live to love anything else. And like everything else we love – everything we sentimentally call our “passion” and “desires” – it’s really an encoded ancestral necessity. We were born to run; we were born because we run. We’re all Running People, as the Tarahumara have always known.[...]
(p99) [...] So here’s what Coach Vigil was trying to figure out : was Zatopek a great man who happened to run, or a great man because he ran ? Vigil couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but his gut kep telling him that there was some kind of connection between the capacity to love and the capacity lo love running. The engineering was certainly the same: both depended on loosening your grip on your own desires, putting aside what you wanted and appreciating what you got, being patient and unforgiving and undemanding. Sex and speed – haven’t they been symbiotic for most of our existence, as intertwinted as the strands of our DNA? We wouldn’t be alive without love; we wouldn’t have survived without running; maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that getting better at one could make you better at the other. [...]
(p104) [...]
“Sometimes,” she said, “it takes a woman to bring out the best in a man.”
[...]
(p125) [...] You can’t hate the Beast and expect to beat it; the only way to truly conquer something, as every great philosopher and geneticist will tell you, is to love it [...]
(p213) [...] I knew aerobic exercise was a powerful antidepressant, but i hadn’t realized it could be so profoundly mood stabilizing and – i hate to use the word – meditative. If you don’t have answers to your problem after a four-hour run, you ain’t getting them. [...]
(p241) [...] You don’t stop running because you get old, the Dipsea Demon always said. You get old because you stop running…. [...]
p239-p243 … buy the book here … *grins*
(p244) [...] “So simple,” he said. “Just move your legs. Because if you don’t think you were born to run, you’re not only denying history. You’re denying who you are.” [...]
(p253) [...] The reason we race isn’t so much to beat each other, he understood, but to be with each other. [...] He was no good and had no reason to believe he ever would be, but the joy he got from running was the joy of adding his power to the pack. [...]
(p266) [...] “Just beat the course,” i told myself. “No one else. Just the course.” [...]
(Acknowledgments) [...] Caballo thought it over. For about a minute.
“No thanks,” he decided. “I don’t want anyone to do anything except come run, party, dance, eat, and hang with us. Running isn’t about making people buy any stuff. Running should be free, man.” [...]
