In rowing, you're always striving for that perfect stroke, that repetition, each one being as good as the last. Same thing with cooking. You can't say, 'Oh, I don't feel well, so I'm going to put out a crappy plate.'

America's seen me go from Olympic glory to 'Biggest Loser'. I want to go back to Olympic glory again. It's kind of the American way, rebuilding yourself and remodeling yourself and making yourself more of who you are.

When using the run-walk method to finish a marathon, the most important walk break comes in the first mile. The second most important one comes in the second mile, and so on. The point is, walk before you become fatigued.

Being on 'The Biggest Loser,' that's where my fire turned back on. It was time to go out there and take care of business. The old dog has the scent to hunt again, and for me, this dog wants to run again and go with the big guys.

I was totally into football, totally into mainstream sports my whole life...The media has tried to categorize me, call me a hippie, call me alternative. I work hard. My social life and beliefs don't get in the way of my training.

One thing I like about boxing is that I will not have to deal with the same kind of politics that I had to in skating. In boxing, it is not about your appearance, or how your costume looks, what color it is, or how much it costs.

OK, they fire the puck from the blue line. Chief usually yelling 'block the shot' at the defensemen. They doesn't have the goalie gear, but they have to block the shot. So who is more crazy, me or the defensemen? Who is more weird?

You guys just here to blame someone. You never look yourselves in the mirror, eh? You're always good. You never make the mistakes. Your articles are always perfect. In reality, what have you done for this city? If you ask yourself, what have you done besides only criticize? Not much.

I have always loved to skate, and that is all I wanted to do. Having my whole, entire career taken away from me by somebody else - not losing it myself - I do have blame, but when somebody takes your whole, entire life away from you, and you don't know what to do, it's like you're lost.

I'm trying to make better choices, and for me, this is kind of a rebirth. If I make the Olympic team? Great. If not, look at myself after eight years and ballooning up almost 200 pounds and getting on 'The Biggest Loser.' You know what? I get my life back again, and that's what truly mattered to me.

I spent the first twenty years of my running career trying to run as many miles as I could as fast as I could. Then I spent the next twenty years trying to figure out how to run the least amount of miles needed to finish a marathon. And I've come to the conclusion the second way is much more enjoyable.

It's an incredible feeling, 110,000 people energy at that level. What I realized from watching the first day of competition was that athletes that got excited and happy and got the fans into it and clapping, they did better. The athletes that took it too seriously, they didn't do as well as they'd hoped.

The label of 'marathoner' has, from the beginning, been awarded to those who went the distance under their own power, whether they ran, walked, crawled or tiptoed. When you cross that finish line, you've entered an elite group. About one-tenth of one percent of the population has done it. Don't let anyone take that great achievement away from you.

Often I visualize a quicker, like almost a ghost runner, ahead of me with a quicker stride. It's really crazy. In races, this always happens to me. I see the vision of a runner ahead of me, maybe just 15, 20 meters ahead of me, and the cadence of that runner, which is actually me in the future, is a little quicker, so if I'm going (his rhythm/breathing), then my ghost runner, the vision of me, ahead of me, like opening up and just going for it, is quicker .

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