Top Highlights

• the edifice emitted from morning to night a steady but unpredictable cacophony of barely human yelps, primordial shrieks, and off-key fragments of current hit songs, all courtesy of a singular group of young sapiens whose main function in life was to run, jump, and toss heavy objects about. And to do so far better than, well, ordinary mortals.
• He and Cassidy had been through what they now called the “Trial of Miles.” As with shipwreck survivors, hostages, and others in dire circumstances, duress fosters an unsentimental kind of intimacy. At times Cassidy and Mizner seemed to be able to read each other’s minds.
• for just as rank has its privileges so indeed does the barely comprehensible conditioning of good distance runners. They gab like magpies. At paces that might stun and dismay the religious jogger, the runners easily kept up all manner of chatter and horseplay. When they occasionally blew by a huffing fatty or an aging road runner, they automaticall...
• He wanted to impart some of the truths Bruce Denton had taught him, that you don’t become a champion 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 ...
• “They make you want to run through the jungle, baby,” he said happily, “cover countryside at a clip, slide by in the night like a scuttling cloud.” His eyes had the faraway cast, but his voice quavered in mock solemnity like a Southern tent evangelist. Sensing genuine interest, he picked up the tempo. “They make you bolt awake in the middle of the ...