60 Motivational Running Quotes

Looking to lace up your running shoes and hit the pavement with renewed vigor? Sometimes, all you need is a little push to transform a good run into a great one. Whether you're training for a marathon, aiming to beat your personal best, or just trying to stay active, a surge of motivation can make all the difference. That's why we've curated a top-notch collection of the 60 most inspiring motivational running quotes. Allow these words of wisdom to fuel your passion, ignite your determination, and help you conquer every mile with confidence. Get ready to be inspired and let these powerful quotes elevate your running journey!

1. “Run when you can, walk if you have to, crawl if you must; just never give up.” - Dean Karnazes

2. “Everything you need is already inside.” - William J. Bowerman

3. “People sometimes sneer at those who run every day, claiming they’ll go to any length to live longer. But I don’t think that’s the reason most people run. Most runners run not because they want to live longer, but because they want to live life to the fullest. If you’re going to while away the years, it’s far better to live them with clear goals and fully alive than in a fog, and I believe running helps you do that. Exerting yourself to the fullest within your individual limits: that’s the essence of running, and a metaphor for life—and for me, for writing as well. I believe many runners would agree.” - Haruki Murakami

4. “Athletes need to enjoy their training. They don't enjoy going down to the track with a coach making them do repetitions until they're exhausted. From enjoyment comes the will to win.” - Arthur Lydiard

5. “Some seek the comfort of their therapist's office, other head to the corner pub and dive into a pint, but I chose running as my therapy.” - Dean Karnazes

6. “Nearly all runners do their slow runs too fast, and their fast runs too slow." Ken Mierke says. "So they're just training their bodies to burn sugar, which is the last thing a distance runner wants. You've got enough fat stored to run to California, so the more you train your body to burn fat instead of sugar, the longer your limited sugar tank is going to last."-The way to activate your fat-burning furnace is by staying below your aerobic threshold--your hard-breathing point--during your endurance runs.” - Christopher McDougall

7. “He wanted to impart some of the truths Bruce Denton had taught him, that you dont' become a runner by winning a morning workout. The only true way is to marshal the ferocity of your ambition over the course of many days, weeks, months, and (if you could finally come to accept it) years. The Trial of Miles; Miles of Trials. How could he make them understand?” - John L. Parker Jr.

8. “Though Jack Nubbins was extremely talented, Quenten Cassidy had viewed the Specter; when he reached down through the familiar layers of gloom and fatigue he generally found more there than a nameless and transient desire to acquire plastic trophies. He and Nubbins were not even in the same ball park.” - John L. Parker Jr.

9. “He understood well enough how a man with a choice between pride and responsibility will almost always choose pride--if responsibility robs him of his manhood.” - Stephen King

10. “Running is about finding your inner peace, and so is a life well lived.” - Dean Karnazes

11. “In the year 2025, the best men don't run for president, they run for their lives. . . .” - Stephen King

12. “You got one guy going boom, one guy going whack, and one guy not getting in the endzone.” - john madden

13. “Searching for nothingWondering if I’ll changeI’m trying everythingBut everything still stays the sameI thought if I showed you I could flyWouldn’t need anyone by my sideI'm running backwardsWith broken wings I know I’ll die” - Sully Erna

14. “I run because if I didn’t, I’d be sluggish and glum and spend too much time on the couch. I run to breathe the fresh air. I run to explore. I run to escape the ordinary. I run…to savor the trip along the way. Life becomes a little more vibrant, a little more intense. I like that.” - Dean Karnazes

15. “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” - Haruki Murakami

16. “But I also realize that winning doesn't always mean getting first place; it means getting the best out of yourself.” - Meb Keflezighi

17. “There are two goddesses in your heard. The Goddess of Wisdom and the Goddess of Wealth. Everyone thinks they need to get wealth first, and wisdom will come. So they concern themselves with chasing money. But they have it backwards. You have to give your heart to the Goddess of Wisdom, giver her all your love and attention, and the Goddess of Wealth will become jealous, and follow you.” - Joe Vigil

18. “He was a mystery to her, and every time she tried to solve him it caused her a little more pain. But when she tired to give him up he pursued her in her thoughts, stronger each time.” - Anna Godbersen

19. “He was onto something. Something huge. It wasn't just how to run; it was how to live, the essence of who we are as a species and what we're meant to be.” - Christopher McDougall

20. “I often lose motivation, but it's something I accept as normal.” - Bill Rodgers

21. “I had as many doubts as anyone else. Standing on the starting line, we're all cowards.” - Alberto Salazar

22. “O.K. I'm running out of appetite. Let this swirl— a bit like Crab Nebula— do for now.” - Charles Olson

23. “They say a good love is one that sits you down, gives you a drink of water, and pats you on top of the head. But I say a good love is one that casts you into the wind, sets you ablaze, makes you burn through the skies and ignite the night like a phoenix; the kind that cuts you loose like a wildfire and you can't stop running simply because you keep on burning everything that you touch! I say that's a good love; one that burns and flies, and you run with it!” - C. JoyBell C.

24. “The footing was really atrocious. I loved it. I really like Cross Country; you're one with the mud.” - Lynn Jennings

25. “Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up, 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 the lion or a gazelle-when the sun comes up, you'd better be running.” - Christopher McDougall

26. “Vigil couldn't quite put his finger on it, but his gut kept telling him that there was some kind of connection between the capacity to love and the capacity to 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 forgiving and undemanding.” - Christopher McDougall

27. “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 'passions' and 'desires'-it's really an encoded ancestral necessity. We were born to run; we were born because we run.” - Christopher McDougall

28. “After joyfully working each morning, I would leave off around midday to challenge myself to a footrace. Speeding along the sunny paths of the Jardin du Luxembourg, ideas would breed like aphids in my head—for creative invention is easy and sublime when air cycles quickly through the lungs and the body is busy at noble tasks.” - Roman Payne

29. “There are two goddesses in your heart,” he told them. “The Goddess of Wisdom and the Goddess of Wealth. Everyone thinks they need to get wealth first, and wisdom will come. So they concern themselves with chasing money. But they have it backwards. You have to give your heart to the Goddess of Wisdom, give her all your love and attention, and the Goddess of Wealth will become jealous, and follow you.” Ask nothing from your running, in other words, and you’ll get more than you ever imagined.” - Christopher McDougall

30. “It does no good to run. And it does no good to hide. But I know what it's like. Your brain shuts down, and you follow your instincts. Or, at least, you think you do. But you know what you're really doing? When you flee through the night, or crawl into your little bolt-hole? You know what's really guiding you? Controlling you? Pushing you on? Genre conventions.” - Mike Carey & Peter Gross

31. “Rogue Squadron doesn’t run. Unless we really, really have to.""No, this will be Wraith Squadron’s mission.""We don’t mind running. Even when we don’t have to.” - Aaron Allston

32. “A substantial daily intake of alcohol was the perfect way to stay in shape.” - Simon Napier-Bell

33. “...the big increases in heart and blood volumes that occur by the 12th week of pregnancy should have the same effect as 'blood doping'. This partially explains the outstanding performances of several female athletes from Eastern bloc countries who were at this stage of pregnancy when they competed in the 1976 Olympics.” - James F. Clapp

34. “We're still on the run. That's for sure.Right on. This time we're on.And we won't stop till we win.” - Koushun Takami

35. “She clutched the train ticket tighter and waited for the sense of escape to come over her as it had a dozen times before, that heady sensation of having just scooted through the clanging gate, of eluding the thrown net. It didn't come. She was running again, but she wasn't escaping. She'd been chased to ground a long, long time ago.” - Connie Brockway

36. “You get hit the hardest when trying to run or hide from a problem. Like the defense on a football field, putting all focus on evading only one defender is asking to be blindsided.” - Criss Jami

37. “A typical race morning usually starts out looking like a scene from a zombie movie: individuals or pairs of people walking down a deserted street, all headed in the same direction.... Inevitably, regardless of the weather, U2's "Beautiful Day" streams out of loudspeakers.” - Sarah Bowen Shea

38. “When I was little and running on the race track at school, I always stopped and waited for all the other kids so we could run together even though I knew (and everybody else knew) that I could run much faster than all of them! I pretended to read slowly so I could "wait" for everyone else who couldn't read as fast as I could! When my friends were short I pretended that I was short too and if my friend was sad I pretended to be unhappy. I could go on and on about all the ways I have limited myself, my whole life, by "waiting" for people. And the only thing that I've ever received in return is people thinking that they are faster than me, people thinking that they can make me feel bad about myself just because I let them and people thinking that I have to do whatever they say I should do. My mother used to teach me "Cinderella is a perfect example to be" but I have learned that Cinderella can go fuck herself, I'm not waiting for anybody, anymore! I'm going to run as fast as I can, fly as high as I can, I am going to soar and if you want you can come with me! But I'm not waiting for you anymore.” - C. JoyBell C.

39. “Life equals running and when we stop running maybe that's how we'll know life is finally finished.” - Patrick Ness

40. “If you don't think you were born to run you're not only denying history. You're denying who you are.” - Christopher McDougall

41. “And then there's the perverse joy of subtly working in references to marathon training in daily life, say at the post office or while waiting outside my first-graders' classrooms at the end of the school day.” - Sarah Bowen Shea

42. “Cassidy's heart tried to leap out through his taught skin and hop into his wet hands. But outwardly it was all very calm, very serene, just as always, and it seemed to last a tiny forever, just like that, a snapshot of them all on the curved parabola of a starting line, eight giant hearts attached to eight pairs of bellows-like lungs mounted on eight pairs of supercharged stilts. They were poised on the edge of some howling vortex they had run 10,000 miles to get to. Now they had to run one more” - John L. Parker Jr.

43. “I told her running away from your problems doesn't solve anything. Really it just hurts the people who count on you.” - Kyle Beachy

44. “As every runner knows, running is about more than just putting one foot in front of the other; it is about our lifestyle and who we are.” - Joan Benoit Samuelson

45. “Vary your training, your running partners, and your environment. Only your imagination limits the ways you can spice up your running routine.” - Bob Glover

46. “For every runner who tours the world running marathons, there are thousands who run to hear the leaves and listen to the rain, and look to the day when it is suddenly as easy as a bird in flight.” - George Sheehan

47. “Whatever you may be missing right now - a person, a place, a feeling, maybe you are injured and missing running - whatever it is, have peace and take heart - remember that any goodbye makes room for a hello.” - Kristin Armstrong

48. “When it's pouring rain and you're bowling along through the wet, there's satisfaction in knowing you're out there and the others aren't.” - Peter Snell

49. “Winning has nothing to do with racing. Most days don't have races anyway. Winning is about struggle and effort and optimism, and never, ever, ever giving up.” - Amby Burfoot

50. “Your body will argue that there is no justifiable reason to continue. Your only recourse is to call on your spirit, which fortunately functions independently of logic.” - Timothy Noakes

51. “Even though I can’t tell others whether they should chase their marathon dreams, I highly recommend they do something completely out of character, something they never in a million years thought they’d do, something they may fail miserably at. Because sometimes the places where you end up finding your true self are the places you never thought to look. That, and I don’t want to be the only one who sucks at something.” - Dawn Dais

52. “What I've learned from running is that the time to push hard is when you're hurting like crazy and you want to give up. Success is often just around the corner.” - James Dyson

53. “What else is there to do in this world but love other people?” - James E. Shapiro

54. “If we push on, we begin to feel a vague, tingling sense of who, or what, we really are. It's a powerful feeling, strong enough to have us coming back for more, again and again.” - Adharanand Finn

55. “Every day in Africa a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows that it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle. When the sun comes up, you better be running.” - Abe Gubegna

56. “There was no girls' cross-country team at our high school, since cross-country courses were two or three miles long, and, at that distance, a girl's uterus could fall out.” - Gretchen Reynolds

57. “Heat radiated off Henry's face. Salty snot ran down his upper lip. A majestic fart propelled him to the top of Section 12, just at the springing of the stadium's curve. He slapped the sign as if high-fiving a teamate. It gave back a game shudder. He was crusing now, darkness be damned, stripping off his sweatshirt and his long underwear top without breaking stride.” - Chad Harbach

58. “Every day is a good day when you run.” - Kevin Nelson

59. “There were moments in life, Marion thought, when you reached back, baton in hand, feeling the runner behind you. Felt the clasp of their fingers resonating through the wood, the release of your hand, which then flew forward, empty, into the space ahead of you.” - Erica Bauermeister

60. “If so, then it was also here where I came to know I can survive what hurts. I believed in my capacity to stand back up and run into the waves again and again, no matter the risk.” - Terry Tempest Williams