"It didn't matter, though; a subtle shift had taken place in his character in the past day or two, one of those subsidences which produce new landmarks and alter the emphasis of the old. What now stood revealed was enjoyment: he realized that he was a human being well fitted to enjoy. Astonishing but true: in all his years of running he had never positively enjoyed a race. He had envied the sprinters, the shot-putters, the jumpers, all those whose event demanded less ascetic discipline than his. Between puts he had seen shot-men reading the paper or chatting with their competitors. And he had felt excluded. Now it occurred to him that he had been excluding himself.
But he wasn't excluding himself anymore. And in a flash of intuition he realized why: he had renounced ambition, the tyranny of schedule and stop-watch, the profit-and-loss accounting of his training to date. He said to himself: I solemnly give up all side-considerations, all hopes of gain or celebrity, retaining one thing only: the satisfaction of doing the thing for its own sake. Foley was said to offer up his running to a saint; he could offer up his too, but to some divinity that did not need to specified: to the spirit of running perhaps."
-Victor Price