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Toronto Marathon
October 19, 2008

  In This Issue
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A little anger never hurts

I said to my wife, Jennie, the other day, "I need to be a little pissed off in Beijing."

See, I race quite well when I'm a little fired up. I need to have a chip on my shoulder to do well. I never saw myself like that, but if you look at the pattern, it's true.

In 1997, I got in a yelling match with an official right before the race and I had my best performance to date.

I got an email from a former coach a while ago and he basically said, in a backhanded way, that I don't run as fast as when he coached me. I stuck that on the wall in my training shed. Basically he said, "What are you going to do to get back to the level of 2002?"

Instead of arguing with him, I just posted it on the wall.

I know now that I have to do a careful balance of having fun and smiling but also once the race starts, I have to be thinking,

"Get the hell out of my way."

I don't want to see myself that way. I want to do it for fun, for the love of the sport. But you have to run 95 per cent for the right reasons and five per cent for the negative, stick-it-to-people reasons.

The key is not to be consumed by the negative stuff or it's not satisfying. I see guys like that crossing the finish line and they're never happy. I don't want to be that guy.

But I do go quite well when I'm pissed off.

 
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