Dave’s Reviews > Personal Best: The Foremost Philosopher of Fitness Shares Techniques and Tactics for Success and Self-Liberation > Status Update

I will never be 32 years old again, but it no longer matters because I’ve learned that winning doesn’t matter, it’s running that counts. And when I push to the limit, I am a boy again—an untried youth listening to the wisdom of my body.

If it is a disgrace to go to one’s ceremonial death with less than a classical body, it is an equal disgrace to rise in the morning and face life the same way. Thinking on death helps this rush toward perfection. Death creates urgency. Death makes every day count, makes every hour important, makes every second an opportunity. Because of death, we know that we do not have enough time. We cannot sit around and wait.

I am a loner but I am rarely lonely. Being alone is my natural state. I seek solitude to think, I isolate myself to write. In this pursuit of ideas, I need no company. I retreat into my mind and there I do what I do best. Then, I am content—never less alone than when alone.

Do not mistake yourself for anyone else—the average American man, the ordinary inhabitant of this globe, the common-variety human being. They exist only on charts. We must as a result have a healthy distrust and a healthy cynicism for the experts and for authority in general. Each of us is an experiment of one, each an expert in the self and a witness to personal truth.

Health by definition is total physical, mental and social wellbeing. That wellbeing is a state of action, not repose. A day of health is a day of action as a fully functioning human being.

Fundamental One is: You don’t need to work hard, but you *do* need to work. And Fundamental Two: You don’t have to work *hard* to become fit.

Contemplation is a creative act. When I am deep in thought on my run, I have a new awareness of myself and my world. What follows will eventually change my day and even my life. This time in reverie, this dreaming while awake, will be translated into action in my real life.

In the race we are all children. Only a child can reach a state of doing with the whole heart, without thinking of anything else, without hesitation or doubt or fear of criticism. The race is such a state. It is pure, perfect, and spontaneous.

But average is not normal. Normal is the best you can be.