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

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.

Baseball is a game where a curve is an optical illusion, a screwball can be a pitch or a person, stealing is legal and you can spit anywhere you like except in the umpire's eye or on the ball.

A woman should be an illusion.

Right now, there's the illusion of order and civilization, but there's a tremendous amount of economic tension in this country and the educational system is constantly eroding.

It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it.

Progress is not an illusion, it happens, but it is slow and invariably disappointing.

If we choose, we can live in a world of comforting illusion.

Censors tend to do what only psychotics do: they confuse reality with illusion.

Do not be misled by what you see around you, or be influenced by what you see. You live in a world which is a playground of illusion, full of false paths, false values and false ideals. But you are not part of that world.

It was either Voltaire or Charlie Sheen who said, 'We are born alone. We live alone. We die alone. And anything in between that can give us the illusion that we're not, we cling to.'

It is pure illusion to think that an opinion that passes down from century to century, from generation to generation, may not be entirely false.

Of course the illusion of art is to make one believe that great literature is very close to life, but exactly the opposite is true. Life is amorphous, literature is formal.

We're living under the illusion that we have the power to determine what to do with it.

They're not even within 100 miles of Baghdad. They are not in any place. They hold no place in Iraq. This is an illusion... they are trying to sell to the others an illusion.

When playing a role, I would feel more comfortable, as you're given a prescribed way of behaving. So, both Facebook and theatre provide contrived settings that provide the illusion of social interaction.

If you understand hallucination and illusion, you don't blindly follow any leader. You must know if the person is sane or insane, over the abyss.

We're in an illusion about what our role is in world politics and foreign affairs, and our policies are killing and destroying and doing a lot of things that we are not aware of.

Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

Romantic love is an illusion. Most of us discover this truth at the end of a love affair or else when the sweet emotions of love lead us into marriage and then turn down their flames.

Art has a double face, of expression and illusion, just like science has a double face: the reality of error and the phantom of truth.

Much violence is based on the illusion that life is a property to be defended and not to be shared.

People have the illusion that all over the world, all the time, all kinds of fantastic things are happening. When in fact, over most of the world, most of the time, nothing is happening.

You can't walk alone. Many have given the illusion, but none have really walked alone. Man is not made that way. Each man is bedded in his people, their history, their culture, and their values.