October 23

PM: 7 miles easy

Relaxed night run through the Chevy Chase neighborhoods with Bain and Klim. I'm officially antsy. 

Today's sports lesson is (to paraphrase Winston Churchill): Don't give up...don't ever, ever give up. 

Just like Michael Phelps. And Brad Sciullo. You're an inspiration for us all: 

"So then you had this burger, which was a myth in the eating world. We all talked about it, and we all thought it would be fun to take on some day. But I said to myself “this is the kind of stuff, this is why people don’t go further in sports, when they believe that none of this can happen. When they believe (someone) like Michael Phelps (can’t happen). Who’d of thought a swimmer could take all the medals like that? Nobody. It was a myth. Everybody thought ‘I’m good at this event or that, boy it would be nice to take those medals.’”

"Well, Michael Phelps decided he was going to do it and he did it. It wouldn’t have mattered how physically ready I was for this — it wouldn’t have mattered in the least. If for one second I said to myself “I can’t do this or I don’t want to do this or maybe I shouldn’t do this,” I would have been done. I’d have felt sick, I’d have felt terrible, I’d have been in just awful shape mentally and physically if I’d given up the zone."

His time? 4:39:00. To think that my high school buddies and I once celebrated after we all finished something called a "Burrito El Gigante." We were way out of our league, in retrospect.