I feared the verdict of the watch, where I either lost the race against time that day or would lose it soon by making the record even harder to break. The time trap had snapped shut.

The records fell easily at first. Dozens of seconds peeled away with every running of a course, and I could hardly wait for the next chance to improve.

I've lived nearby since 1981 and probably have averaged one run a week there. That's more than 1000 repetitions, and I have yet to tire of this course.

His name, Buzz, fits. He can buzz along at 40 miles an hour when his genetic memory moves him.

The results would have stayed on the watch face until the batteries died. But trying to make time stand still this way would have been a mistake. It is just as important to erase times eventually as to save them at first.

Our favorite: a former garbage dump converted into a riverside park. I first ran there more than 30 years ago when a marathon passed through this park that later became home to Pre's Trail.

Time means a great deal to every runner. It means everything to me, because most days miles don't count; only minutes do.

That's how most of us would feel. But the sport has a few deviants without consciences.

When running to fill a time quota, however, the reverse happens. You can't make that time pass any faster by rushing, so you settle into a pace that feels right to you at the moment. Each minute above a quota is a little victory.

A lesser but still fundamental rule of racing is that you properly enter the event. Anyone who doesn't but still insists on running interferes with the paying customers.

These thieves defend themselves by saying, 'I was there all the time, and the officials missed me.' Favorite excuses for missing surveillance checkpoints: jacket covered the number took off the shirt with the number hidden in a crowd.

Where did you run today? Now there's a question you don't often hear.

That time is important. It gives a comforting illusion of permanence not found in running by the mile.

Speed eventually neared its peak. The records forced me to work ever harder to drop a less and less time. These time trials came to feel like races, which are fun to run sporadically but not daily.

This act demonstrates graphically a turning away the past and moving ahead. You now get to refresh your time in a friendly way by running with the watch instead of against it or away from it.

Ours is a life of constant reruns. We're always circling back to where we'd we started, then starting all over again. Even if we don't run extra laps that day, we surely will come back for more of the same another day soon.

The Chip also reduces the damage done by bandits. They still steal drinks and cheers along the course, but no longer scramble the paying runners' results. No entry fee, no Chip, no time or place.

The hours, minutes and seconds stand as visible reminders that your effort put them all there. Preserve until your next run, when the watch lets you see how Impermanent your efforts are.

A course never quite looks the same way twice. The combinations of weather, season, light, feelings and thoughts that you find there are ever-changing.

In fact, the bandits steal the drinks and assistance provided along the course. Worse, they cross the finish line and mess up the scoring of legitimate runners.

I feared the verdict of the watch, where I either lost the race against time that day or would lose it soon by making the record even harder to break. The time trap had snapped shut.

Buzz has reduced my range. Running safely with him means using fewer and shorter routes, with multiple laps per day or multiple returns there per week. Neither of us minds repeating ourselves. This is what runners do.

The natural urge when running a distance is to push harder and finish sooner - to race against time. Every second behind a deadline is a little defeat.

Yet the home courses are where you spend dozens to hundreds of hours a year. You must choose them well.

They trained mostly by time periods, checking their pace for known distance only on special occasions.

I've lived nearby since 1981 and probably have averaged one run a week there. That's more than 1,000 repetitions, and I have yet to tire of this course.

No marathon gets easier later. The half way point only marks the end of the beginning.

I did work out every day. I needed it to have the endurance to do what needed to be done and not get hurt. I have such a new respect for action stars now.

I mean the only thing that is hopefully good about us is after the arguments we can actually still face each other the next day or the day after and talk about something else and sort of get over it.

My favorite singer to this day is Nat King Cole. I've tried to emulate his phrasing. It is so absolutely beautiful to listen to his lovely voice.

I want to have babies one day but not right now. When I do it I want to do it really well. I want it to be my best project in life.

I think I've become a much better singer and a much better player. Years and years of playing a couple of hours every day will do that.

I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day.

I just wrote one song at a time. Kinda like an alcoholic. One day at a time.

Working mothers do an hour more per day than working fathers do and working mothers do on average an hour more per day with the kids than working fathers do.

When it is time to get to work, I go away completely and don't do anything except the work. And that can be 16 hours a day.

George Pal had total control, and he was there on the set every day. You never met a more charming man in your entire lifetime - what a lovely gentleman.

I'll tell you what I did need to learn was tolerance, and I think I've been actually given a daily opportunity to practice that, and it's - it's - and I know that that sounds almost like a backhanded slap, and it is in a way because I haven't been successful at it every day.

Since the beginning, I always loved the game. When you grow up in Montreal, one day you want to be a professional hockey player. When I was six or seven, I knew that was what I wanted.

Depending on what day of the week it is and what time of the month it is, I'm a good friend or not a good friend. I'm more or less a good mom or not a good mom, more or less a good mate or not a good mate. That's just life, whether or not you're public.

Even if you walk exactly the same route each time - as with a sonnet - the events along the route cannot be imagined to be the same from day to day, as the poet's health, sight, his anticipations, moods, fears, thoughts cannot be the same.

A play is much easier to maintain your personal life with because if you're rehearsing, you're working like from 11 to 6 or 11 to 5 and you get to have your whole morning and your whole evening. When you're doing the play, you have all day.

I'd like to one day play Amanda, the mother, in The Glass Menagerie.

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

I'm working harder than ever now, and I'm putting on my pants the same as I always have. I just get up every day and try to do a little better than the day before, and that is to run a great restaurant with great food, great wine, and great service. That's my philosophy.

Failure happens all the time. It happens every day in practice. What makes you better is how you react to it.

The day cold and fair with a high easterly wind: we were visited by two Indians who gave us an account of the country and people near the Rocky mountains where they had been.

Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment.

The Pawnee chief had left the village the day after the doctor arrived, with 50 or 60 horses and many people, and had taken his course to the north of our route.